Fort Beacon
by Joshington
Summary: Set in an AU Remnant not unlike our own world, the United Faunus Federation is readying to wage war on the Human Kingdoms Coalition, ending a time of peace. Four young soldiers are thrust together in the newly established Hunter Program and, armed with experimental AURA armor, must work together to survive a war unlike anything Remnant has experienced before.
1. Chapter 1: Prologue

**Fort Beacon  
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**07:21 hours  
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General Ozpin glares at the pile of papers and reports on his desk, detailing the last month of conflicts between Human Kingdoms Coalition border patrols and the increasingly aggressive United Faunus Federation forces; federation snipers locking down roads, minor skirmishes in border territories, major troop movements including mechanized infantry and dozens of attack helicopters, increase in faunus mining and production activity, the list goes on. When he first joined the Vale Armed Forces 29 years ago, Remnant had always been a world of peace, an environment inappropriate for men and women of his occupation. Soon after, he was thrown onto the battlefields of the First Human-Faunus War, and it completely changed how he viewed his once optimistic world. Now that the men and women of Fort Beacon, the base that he commands, are about to follow in his footsteps, he wishes he could be anywhere else.

"Anything else, General?" Ozpin asks the middle aged blonde sitting in a desk on the other side of her room as he leans back to stretch and rubs his eyes.

"No, that's all of the reports from the borders for today," Lieutenant General Glynda Goodwitch replies. "I'm sure there's going to be even more coming in by the end of the week."

"Of course," Ozpin says. He leans back forwards and picks up a random report. A VAF C-130 Hercules was shot down four days ago by a surface to air missile while on a supply run from one border country to another. No survivors. Ozpin sighs heavily.

"Of all the times for the world to go to war," he says, mostly to himself. "It had to be now."

"At least it's for a good cause," Glynda reassures. "The Feds have been breaking the armistice for nearly as long as its been around. Hopefully this war will put an end to the violence. God knows the border countries could use some peace, at least long enough for all their liquid dust to be drilled so they'd be left alone." Ozpin chuckles.

"It's funny how we're already calling it a war, as if our fate is sealed to fight in something that doesn't even exist yet."

"Unless you have faith in the politicians to turn this around, our fate basically is sealed." Ozpin can't help but silently agree. The phone on his desk buzzes.

"General Ozpin," his secretary outside says. "General Ironwood is here to see you."

"Ironwood is here?" Glynda asks suddenly.

"Send him in," Ozpin says into the phone, then turns to Glynda. "That would explain the sudden influx of troop movements earlier today." Glynda rolls her eyes. Ironwood has made it a habit to surround himself with his brigades of mechanized infantry and air support wherever he goes. The door opens, and a broad shouldered, well built giant of a man, with greying jet black crew cut hair and an impressive scar over his left eye.

"Ozpin!" Ironwood greets, smiling. Ozpin stands up and shakes the man's hand.

"Good to see you again, General," he says. "It's been too long."

"Please, please, it's James," Ironwood says. "No need for formalities between officers."

"Of course," Ozpin gestures to Glynda, who has been standing with her arms crossed since Ironwood entered. "I'm sure you remember Glynda."

"Couldn't forget," Ironwood says, extending his hand to the woman, who accepts it, then returns her hand to its previous location. "Enjoying the General's company?"

"Well enough," she replies coldly. Ozpin walks back behind his desk and pours a second cup of coffee.

"So, what brings you all the way to Fort Beacon?" he asks, handing Ironwood the cup. "I never received any notification of your arrival."

"That would be because this meeting isn't exactly...over the table," Ironwood says, sipping his coffee.

"Go on," Ozpin says slowly.

"Actually, as far as the rest of the world knows, I'm in the capital right now, overseeing Paladin construction. I don't want any Federation sleeper agents knowing anything about this."

"What's so important that you would go to me first?" Ozpin asks, watching his mug as he swirls the brown liquid.

"I want your troops to be the first testers of Project AURA." Ozpin quickly looks up.

"You have funding?" he asks.

"Parliament is scared. They're willing to fund just about anything at this point."

"Back up a few steps," Glynda says. "What's Project AURA?"

"Advanced Utilization and Repairable Armor," Ozpin answers. "Essentially a high tech combat suit that can repair itself. James has been preaching the idea since we were grunts."

"It's much more than just a 'combat suit'," Ironwood says. "It is a series of spaced and reactive body armor, linked together by a jointed metal skeleton. A battery pack is located on the back of the suit which powers electromagnetic waves in the suit."

"So how is that any more effective than the body armor we already have?" Glynda asks. "Sounds like an overly expensive toy so far."

"Understandable, but I was about to set to that part," Ironwood says. "Let's say someone wearing an AURA suit is struck by a bullet square in the chest. The outer layer of armor is designed to fold inside itself, the space inside breaking the initial momentum of the bullet. The inner layers then break apart the bullet, dividing the force of the bullet at different angles, effectively stopping the projectile without harm to the user."

"Now here's the fun part: The electromagnetic waves are heavily modified for the suit's use, and can react with the armor itself. It travels to the damaged portion of the suit, bends the armor back into place, and slightly burns the pieces together, similar to welding. My suits have already been tested to withstand up to 500 rounds of rifle ammunition and enough fragments from grenades, mines, and artillery shells to collectively level half of this base before the battery dies. All I need now is some testing in the field. Which is where you come in, Ozpin."

"I do, do I?" Ozpin says.

"Just give me the names of twenty of your best soldiers, and the suits will be here by tomorrow morning." Ozpin sets his coffee down.

"James, as much as I would like to help out an old friend, I already have my hands tied behind my back readying to relocate the entire fort to a border country for war. I honestly couldn't handle having to keep track of a special forces unit on top of fighting the Feds. Why not ask a more battle savvy General?"

"I don't trust those buffoons with AURA. They'll dump them on the front lines and get them handed over to the Federation a week into the war. I know you'll handle them carefully." Ozpin looks to Glynda, who shrugs. "Come on, Oz. If I get a few months of testing with the suits I already have, they can go into mass production and this war can be over before the Federation could get all four wheels spinning." Ozpin thinks it over for a moment, then says,

"If I do it, I'll need something in return."

"Of course, name it."

"I need authorization from Parliament to initiate my Hunter Program." Ironwood immediately sighs and covers his eyes. Ozpin smiles. He could've put money on him reacting like that.

"You're still pushing for that college thesis?" Ironwood asks, sarcasm ripe in his tone.

"As if AURA is anymore unreasonable."

"The difference is that I have AURA in physical form, with proof that it is applicable. The Hunter Program is nothing more than a theory, not even a very good one. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you want to create special forces teams, each comprised of only four soldiers each, and make them train together, isolated from any other groups. We already have special forces, Ozpin, we don't need anymore."

"It's not about the physical advantage of the soldiers, it's about the mental," Ozpin argues. "A bio report is conducted on each soldier, complete with their combat history, personality, traits, former employments, attitudes, indictments, list of friends in the military, everything. One of the stronger soldiers is selected as a team leader, and three more soldiers are selected based on how linear their reports are with the team leader. They are already guaranteed to work well together because of the bio reports."

"Each team member fills a role in the unit; sniper, assault, stealth, and demolition; each with their unique, handpicked equipment and weapons. They take four weeks of advanced training and courses, all as a unit. By the time they enter the battlefield, they are already comfortable with working together. They retain their original ranks, but are not put above one another; team leader has senior command, but other than that they are equal."

"That's what makes Hunters different from other SF grunts. They are not merely comrades in arms, they're a small family. They have the same pasts, the same ambitions, the same goals in life as well as the military. They will work hand in hand to protect not just their kingdom, but their family as well. They are mentally equipped to fight for the soldiers around them because they care for them so greatly, more so than typical battle buddies." Ironwood takes a long slurp of his coffee.

"Still sounds like a waste of resources," he criticizes.

"It's several times cheaper than Project AURA. That's my price, take it or go to one of your 'buffoon' friends." Ironwood takes a deep breathe and hands Ozpin his mug, who sets it on his desk.

"Alright, I'll convince Parliament. They really want Project AURA to succeed, so it shouldn't be a problem."

"I'm sure it won't," Ozpin smirks. He knows James hates being shown up by him.

"The suits will be here by tomorrow, you should get your first Hunter teams organized by the end of the week."

"I'll keep it in mind," Ozpin says. Ironwood leaves the room, shutting the door behind him.

"He hasn't changed at all," Glynda says.

"Never has. Pass word to the captains in the base, we're starting the bio reports tonight."


	2. Chapter 2: Red

**Camp Signal**

**04:21 hours**

Captain Jade storms into the barracks of 4th Platoon and swipes on the lights.

"Wake up 4th Platoon!" he shouts, along with multiple other synonymous phrases laced with cursing. The soldiers scramble out of their bunks and pull on their camouflage pants, jackets and combat boots. "We're being mobilized for patrol on the borders! Report to the mess hall for chow then come back for your gear!" The soldiers file out the door one by one, Jade staring them down as they pass him. He's about to leave behind the last one when he notices something in his peripheral vision. He turns around and, sure enough, it's Private Rose. She has her sleep mask over her eyes and headphones covering her ears.

"Private Rose!" Jade shouts. No response from the girl. He walks over to her bunk and leans down so he's right next to her ear.

"PRIVATE ROSE!" he bellows. Rose immediately sits up, sitting her head on the bunk above hers. "GET THE FUCK UP PRIVATE!" The soldier lets out a quiet squeal and rips the mask and headphones from with shaking hands.

"Yes sir!" Rose cracks. Music is still blaring out of the headphones. She rolls out of bed and digs under the covers for her scroll.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING PRIVATE!" Jade yells. Rose unsurely stands at attention.

"I-"

"Keep working!" Rose goes back to the covers. She doesn't need to look at him to know that Jade is fuming right now. She feels the scroll under the blanket and feels for the volume button under the blanket. The sound turns up.

"You are a disgrace to the VAF, Private!" Jade shouts. Rose digs in her locker for her pants. Her jacket falls on the floor. "If I were waking you up because we were under attack, you and I would be in a smoking fucking crater!"

"Yes, Sir!" Rose says with a knot the size of said crater in her throat. She tries to sit down to slip through both pant legs at once, but hits her head on the bunk again, and stands back up.

"I'm not waiting on your sorry ass!" Jade declares. "Report to the mess hall in two mikes, or you're burning the base's shit for the next week!"

"Yes, Sir," Rose mutters, and Jade storms out. She eventually gets into her pants and picks her jacket up off the ground, but it's inside out. She reaches into one sleeve, and her hand gets stuck on the cuff. Finally, she snaps, and rips the jacket off with all her might, throws it onto the top bunk, and punches her fist into the bunk frame in front of her in a fit of rage.

"I see the Captain is treating you well," a voice says from the doorway. Rose turns around and sees Staff Sergeant Penny Blackwell leaning against the doorway, smiling. She must've slipped behind Jade, knowing Rose wouldn't hear him initially.

"Yeah, he's great," Rose says, rubbing her knuckles. "Reminds me of PE sometimes." Penny chuckles.

"Somehow I knew you'd say that, friend," she says. Rose smiles. Penny is her only real friend in the military; her other squadmates mostly mind her, but Penny goes out of her way to make sure Rose is comfortable, going as far as to volunteer to be her spotter. It must've been really obvious that Rose isn't typical VAF grunt material and could use the helping hand reforming.

"Isn't Jade gonna be mad?" Rose asks, getting her jacket on.

"Nah, it's just a drill, he doesn't really care. He only scares you because you're easy to scare," Penny explains with a smile. "Come on, let's walk together."

"No, don't let me hold you up," Rose says. She takes her boots out of the locker. "I'll meet you there in a bit. Jade's already gonna be pissed that I'll be late."

"How long are you burning shit this time?"

"A week." Penny motions her head to one side.

"Eh, not bad." The two women laugh. "See you soon, friend."

"See ya," Rose says, and Penny leaves for the mess hall. Rose pulls on her boots and begins tying them.

_Why the hell am I here?_ She asks herself in her head. _I'm not fit to be a soldier._

Of course, she's fooling herself. That's what her uncle, Lieutenant Qrow, legendary scout sniper from the First Human-Faunus War would tell her. Like uncle, like niece apparently. All her life, she's been the quick one. She was running about as long as she could stand. The first time she went squirrel hunting with her father and his brother and held a rifle for the first time, it felt like an extension of her arm. She could move passed people without them ever knowing she was there. When the popular girls would pick on her, she would start running and not stop until they were a mile away. She was practically born to be a scout sniper.

On the other hand, deep down inside her, she was just the same little girl, running from the crowds of the world just to play by herself with her toy gun. Likewise, she hated the military life of sleeping in the same room of her co-workers, eating packaged food that tasted about as good as they looked in a building full of trained killers, having to perform drill after drill after drill with them as if they really know each other. That's another reason why Rose is such a good scout sniper; she's only really relaxed when she's alone with her gun, her thoughts, and her spotter; someone she can really trust, like Penny.

She finishes tying both boots and heads outside.

It's a beautiful morning on Remnant. The stars are beginning their exodus, flickering away and being replaced by pink twilight. The moon is completing its orbit, the blown of chunks that stretched all the way to the core fully visible. A KA-21 Templar airship rests in the sky near the base, wings fully spread and silhouetted in the morning sky. Small dots, presumably the XL-449 Bullhead transport ships, dot back and forth, delivering and retrieving troops to and from the airship. That's most likely where 4th Platoon and the rest of the base will fly to first, in order to arrive at their drill location. Rose watches the little dots as she walks to the mess hall, like a girl watches butterflies jump from tree to tree.

Suddenly, all the lights in the base disappear; the barracks, the mess hall, the armory, the offices, the guard towers; everything goes dark. Not only that, but it turns unusually quiet. There's always trucks driving from one area of the base to the other, the generators feeding electricity to the base so they never have to risk a power failure caused by the civilian population, APCs, tanks and whatnot being worked on. It's like the base is one big machine with smaller components working independently. But none of that is happening now. Not a sound fills the dark sky. Rose starts to say aloud,

"What the-"

The dark sky is replaced by a sudden explosion of bright light, orange and white in color, and the mess hall is blown apart from the inside. Rose is thrust backward by the enormous shockwave as burning pieces of wood and metal fly out in all directions like a scaled up frag grenade. Sirens instantly wail.

Rose's mind races as she lays on the ground, the swirling flames of war stretching into the sky. What happened? Who caused it? Was it an accident? Are they under attack? Where's Penny?

Oh God, Penny. Her mind says. She scrambles to her feet and looks at what remains of the building, which is little more than the outer frame. Through the thick black smoke, she can see the airship fold its wings and start to move across the sky, puking out several squadrons of smaller ships. Gun shots ring out from the armory, and there's another explosion. Rose crouches down and reaches for her sidearm, but she left it in her locker.

Stupid, stupid! Fucking stupid! There's another explosion, possibly from the barracks, Rose isn't sure anymore, and a nearby squad of friendlies returns fire from the cover of a Paladin, an infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) developed in Atlas. Rose runs over to them.

"Who the hell are you?" one of them shouts to Rose.

"PFC Rose, scout sniper," she hastily replies. Adrenaline is beginning to take control of her body, and her mind switches to her training. She removes all thoughts of Penny and Jade and her platoon and panic from her head. "Who's CO?"

"Right here," a Lieutenant says. "Where's your unit?"

"In the mess hall," Rose answers, trying not to think about them. "What the hell is going on?"

"We got bogeys moving through the back of the base!" a soldier with an LMG replies. A squad of VAF troops runs out of their barracks, and are mowed down by someone inside. Rose momentarily freezes in terror as she watches the bodies fall, the blood spray from their backs, their screams of pain and agony joining the chorus of jet engines and gunshots and similar screams that fill the once peaceful twilight.

"Fuck, light it up!" the first soldier, a Lieutenant, orders. The soldiers turn around and open fire on the barracks, filling it with holes and shattering the windows. Someone hands Rose a rifle, she takes aim, and fires as well; her first shots in combat.

_Welcome to war._ She grimly tells herself.

A soldier jumps into the Paladin, crawls over to the drivers seat, and leaps out the door, next to the other soldiers. He's holding his bloodied leg.

"Sitrep, Corporal," the Lieutenant demands.

"Full scale attack," the Corporal says as he takes out his medkit. Rose stands up and piers through her scope across the hood of the Paladin, searching for targets. The fire from the mess hall illuminates several bodies, but she can't make out their uniforms. A grenade goes off nearby makes them scatter. "There's maybe five, six dozen enemy troops inside the base right now. How the hell did they sneak up on us!?"

"Artillery? Armor?" the Lieutenant questions as he reloads his weapon.

"Negative, just infantry."

"Alright, we need to link up with that Templar," the Lieutenant says. Rose looks up and sees that the large ship is moving away from the base, its parasite aircraft returning to its hangars. "They won't engage if they think the enemy has anti air."

"Comms are down," a radioman says. "That blackout must've been an EMP burst, everything is down.

"I can make it," Rose says. The Lieutenant turns to her.

"What?" he asks.

"Airships aren't that fast. I can stay with it long enough to signal it and get it to turn around."

"What are you gonna do, run?"

"I told you, I'm a scout sniper." The Lieutenant begins to think it over, but is interrupted by a hail of gunfire pinging off the Paladin, and fires back.

"Fuck it, might as well," he decides, and hands Rose a flare. "Their infrared sensors won't detect something that small, so you'll have to get in visual range, and that's pretty damn close."

"I got it," Rose says, determined.

"Squad, hold fire!" the Lieutenant shouts. The soldiers get back into cover. "You run when we open up."

"Copy that," Rose says. She drops the rifle and pockets the flare. She plants her hands and feet firmly on the ground, ready to spring.

"Covering fire!" the Lieutenant shouts. The soldiers spring up and let out a hail of gunfire, and Rose shoots off.

She isn't entirely there for those first few seconds. The ground around her starts to explode from nearby bullets landing. She jumps over the dead bodies of her comrades, almost tripping over one of them. A fuel tank ignites a few hundred feet from her and, while it doesn't create a large explosion, she can feel the heat like she's standing right next to it. She tries to push the images surrounding her from her mind, looks straight ahead, and forces her legs to go a little faster.

She is apparently forgotten by both sides of the conflict by the time she leaves the perimeter of the base. She passes multiple bodies of retreating soldiers, most likely taken out by a sniper judging by the well placed wounds, but must've either been killed or relocated since, as she makes it far passed them without incident, but she doesn't slow down.

Even as the sounds of the battle fade behind her, and the endless desert where Camp Signal was located stretches out in front of her, she doesn't stop running, not even slowing down. She is facing the back engines of the airship as it moves away from the battle, out of range of the hostile surface to air missiles that don't exist. The first hour is most critical; this is when the Templar will use most of its engines to gain altitude in order to fly at max speed. That is when Rose must catch up to it. The lives of the men and women in Camp Signal depend on it.

She doesn't let the pressure slow her down, and forces her legs to work faster. She's already breathing hard, but doesn't care. She will make it in time.

As the airship starts to climb above the sand dunes, she lowers her head and watches flowing beneath her. She knows that the only way to survive a run this long is to not worry about the goal.

"Only worry about the road in front of you," her uncle told her long ago.

He was the one that suggested that she join the VAF, when she was a young teenager. She initially protested it, never before thinking about becoming a soldier.

"You say you want to help people?" he asked her. She nodded. "Then protect them by keeping the bad guys far away from them. Don't take my word for it, research it yourself." And so she did. And she trained. And she went on more hunting trips. And she joined the high school track team. And, finally, enlisted on her 18th birthday.

Now, running through a barren desert, away from a massive ambush and towards a 70,000 ton airship, she realizes that she's not just fighting for the lives of everyone back home; she's fighting for everyone else back at that base, people that had the same dream of helping people as her.

For a whole hour she ran, full tilt, never slowing down, never thinking about the burning in her legs, her overworked lungs, the perspiration that soaks her from her waist up. Finally, after what seems like an eternity, she looks up. The airship has only climbed a few hundred meters, but it's enough to prepare for max speed. She's definitely gained ground on it; it's at least twice as big as it was when she was inside the base.

She unsheathes the flare, ignites it, and waves it over her head, without slowing down. Eventually, a single ship exits the Templar, and Rose keeps waving, keeps running.

The Bullhead lands about twenty feet ahead of her and then, finally, Rose slows down. The pain that has been building up in her legs is finally released as the adrenaline slows down, and she is overcome with exhaustion. She drops the flare and collapses in the sand as the crew chief jumps from down from the ship and runs to her.

"Hey, hey stay with me," he says, picking her up. Rose is still gasping for breath, eyes closed, and sweat dripping off her short, red hair. "You're real lucky, kid, we were-"

"No anti-air," Rose gasps.

"What?" the crew chief asks. Rose coughs a few times and says again,

"No...anti-air. Turn around."

"Alright," the crew chief says, and carries her back to the ship. He signals the pilot to take off.

"Get on horn with command," he tells him. "The enemy doesn't have any anti-air and the base is requesting air support."

"Roger," the pilot says, and relays the message through the radio. The crew chief returns to the cargo hold and takes Rose out of her jacket, which reeks of dust powder and sweat, and gives her water. She can barely feel her body.

"Did you seriously run all that way to get us to turn around?" he asks her. Rose opens her eyes wide enough to let the soldier see her silver eyes.

"Yep," she answers. She falls asleep to the crew chief chuckling and the jet engines of the aircraft.


	3. Chapter 3: White

**Border Country, codenamed Counter Wind**

**14:25 hours**

"You sure you know where we're going, Captain?" Sergeant Vermell asks the young white haired officer sitting in the passenger seat of the M939 transport truck, who is busy studying a map.

"It's Captain Schnee," she responds. Vermell rolls his eyes. She's spent more times reminding her soldiers of her rank than making sure this shipment of supplies gets to the frontlines on time. "And yes, of course I know where I'm going. You think I don't know how to read a map?"

"Course not," Vermell replies, looking out the side window. This border country specializes in agriculture, and over half of the land is devoted to crops. The convoy, composed of three M939s and a fully loaded Paladin, is moving in between corn plantations now. "I just don't think our original route took us through this much civilian territory. Lots of exposure out here for us."

"Well, we're not taking the original route, so stop talking and start driving, Sergeant." Schnee retorts.

"Yes, Sir," Vermell says. Schnee looks at him with a disgusted look.

"What is this, the Atlesian Army?" she scoffs. "It's Ma'am, Sergeant." Vermell sighs.

"Yes, Ma'am," he mutters. Schnee returns to her map, but her thoughts on the matter remain. The nerve of some people! People wouldn't stop looking down on her since Officer Academy, since boot camp even, because she was supposed to be uptight, coming from the Schnee family, the family that built most of the weapons and equipment they carry. Didn't they know how hard she trained? How far her father pushed her to live up to the family name?

"Join the military, be a woman of the people," her father had told her since she was little. "Become an officer, prove your capability, then you can have my company." While people like Vermell spent their days drooling, she spent them working to become a leader; it's all she's ever known, and no one will stop her from earning her surname.

There's a popping sound outside the window.

"Shit, Eagle 2's got a flat," Vermell says. "They're waving us over," and he pulls over to the curb. Schnee wants to punch something. Does the world want her to fail all the time? She shoves the map, which was obviously outdated, under the seat, grabs her rifle, and climbs outside.

"You," Schnee shouts, pointing to a random soldier from Eagle 2. "Tell the Paladin to park ahead of Eagle 1, to cover us."

"Yes, Sir," the soldier says, running to the back of the convoy.

"It's yes Ma'am!" she calls to him. He doesn't even look back. She shakes her head and walks over to the truck, where a few soldiers are inspecting the back left tire. "How long will it take to change it?" she asks.

"Not long," a Corporal says, standing up and wiping sweat from his brow. "Fifteen mikes, tops."

"Well, can we tow it behind Eagle 1 or something instead?" Schnee asks.

"Uh, changing the tire now will be a lot easier, Ma'am," the Corporal says. Well, at least he said Ma'am.

"Alright, start changing it," Schnee says, and turns to the dismounted troops of Eagle 3. "Where's Lieutenant Keltan?"

"Here, Ma'am," one of the soldiers says, stepping forward.

"Form a perimeter around the trucks, just to be safe," Schnee orders. Keltan nods and starts barking orders to the troops. By the time the spare tire is rolled out, there are snipers and machine gunners pointing in every direction. Schnee is satisfied, and gets back in her truck and scans the countryside with binoculars.

"This is bullshit, man," she hears from the bed of the truck. Must be a sniper talking to his spotter, or vice versa. She thinks about reprimanding them right then and there for not keeping their heads on the job, but what the hell, grunts will be grunts.

"Yeah, we need new tires," the other soldier says.

"No, not that," the first says. "Why the hell are we delivering this shit to the front, only to turn around again? We're a combat unit, I want some action."

"You shitting me? We're living the dream, dude. We're getting paid to look good, carry guns, not get shot at, and still get bragging rights. Trust me, I've fought the feds, we're better off with this crap."

"Really? This unit has seen combat? I thought I was replacing a guy that got court martialed or something. I figured you guys have been here all along."

"Nah, we onboard the Templar that assisted Fort Beacon, during the first attack."

"You were at Fort Beacon? I heard that place was hell."

"It was, there were bodies everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. The Captain did a hell of a job cleaning house, though." Schnee smiles to herself.

"Who, Schnee? You mean that bitch is actually a competent commander in the field?"

_"Be a woman of the people."_

"Grunts will be grunts," Schnee silently tells herself. Besides, it isn't like it's the first time someone below her has insulted her.

"Yeah, where do you think she got that scar over her eye from? A Fed clawed her."

"Bullshit."

"That's what I heard."

"Well, I heard her dad beat her when she was a kid." Schnee stops looking through the binoculars.

"I doubt the CEO of the fucking Schnee Armaments Corporation would let a scar like that show. The media shitstorm that would bring him."

"Nah, it looks pretty good, as far as scars go. I bet he'd do it if he thought it would look good. She was pretty much raised like a child soldier, right?"

Schnee had dropped the binoculars and is about to get up, when there's a crack of lightning, and a body drops.

"Oh shit! Oh fuck!" the second soldier in the truck cries out. "Fuck me, man down! Man fucking down!" Switching her brain to her training she, grabs her rifle and jumps out of the truck, taking cover behind the front tire.

"Locate that sniper, north by northeast," she says in her radio. The soldiers scramble to take cover behind the trucks. Another shot rings out, and a window shatters.

"I got him," another sniper says on the radio. "Rooftop, red barn, 50 degrees our position. Looks like he's on the roof.

"Take the shot," Weiss orders.

"Negative, he's got a bead on me. He'll never give me time to aim." Schnee thinks for a moment.

"Ok. Lieutenant Keltan, give me some suppressive fire. Fire when ready."

"Copy that," Keltan replies. A few seconds later, gunfire rings out from behind her, and red tracer rounds streak towards the barn. Schnee gets up a quickly darts to the Paladin in front of her. She pounds on the side door, and the passenger opens it.

"Tell your gunner to blow that roof off," she tells him, then closes the door. The massive turret wielding a 30mm autocannon swivels to the side, and fires a single shell. Schnee peeks out, and half the barn is reduced to splinters.

"Can we confirm the kill?" she asks the radio.

"Roger, that's the barn," the sniper confirms. "Or, what's left of it."

"Good. Now everyone fall out and get to work on that wheel again. We're well behind sched-"

She's interrupted by a loud whooshing sound, and Eagle 2 is rolled onto its side, the troops using it for cover thrown away, some without a few body parts.

"Contact!" Schnee shouts, and raises her rifle. She tracks the trail of white smoke, and a row of soldiers dressed in black and white uniforms emerge from the corn and open fire.

"Fire! Fire!" a VAF soldier screams. Schnee is already squeezing on the trigger and moving behind the Paladin, turret turning around. She mows down three of them before the side of the IFV comes alive with sparks courtesy of incoming bullets, and throws herself to the dirt.

"Pop smoke and back to the trucks!" she shouts into her radio. She stands back up, takes out a cylindrical grenade, pulls the pin, and throws it into the middle of the road. She turns to the convoy and sees other soldiers doing the same. Others are also shooting, while more are dragging the dead and dying behind the trucks, which are going to be disabled if they don't get the hell out of there soon.

"Move! Everyone move!" she shouts. She walks out of cover, weapon raised, and gets her first good look at the enemy uniforms.

White Fang.

Originally a peaceful human-faunus relations group, the banner has since been wielded by the Faunus organized crime syndicate. Shortly after the Armistice was signed, all of their business was conducted exclusively inside Federation territory. Recently, they have been venturing outside the borders, with cells inside border countries and even the kingdoms, and are dipping their feet into terrorism, including building the bombs used at Fort Beacon. There is a growing mountain of evidence pointing to White Fang sponsorship by the Federation government.

Schnee shoots two and dives behind the truck before a third could take aim at her. Vermell is already there, prone and shooting under the truck with an LMG.

"Get in, I'll drive!" Schnee orders. Vermell abandons the gun and climbs into the truck. Schnee hands him her gun, which he uses to suppress the White Fang troops, and does the same.

"All units, move forward" she barks into the radio. The White Fang are beginning to fall back into the corn. "Paladin, lead the way. If you were in Eagle 2, just walk alongside another vehicle until we're clear." The Paladin surges forward, and Schnee guns the engine.

Bullets are still pinging off the side of the truck, but they lessen the farther they go.

"Goddamn, that was close," Vermell says, reloading the rifle. Schnee looks out the window behind her, and can see the dozen or so soldiers left from Eagle 2 marching alongside the remaining convoy.

She turns back around just in time to watch the Paladin in front of her get T-Boned by another Paladin that burst out of the corn. The symbol of the White Fang, a red wolf head and three claw marks, is painted on the side in place of the VAF symbol.

"Go around!" Schnee shouts into the radio, spinning the wheel to the left and driving onto the corn field as the friendly IFV is hammered by the White Fang's identical autocannon. A new torrent of bullets hammers the truck, a few reaching the dashboard, but Schnee ignores them and keeps driving, hoping that the rest of the convoy heard her.

"Sergeant Vermell, do you have a visual on the rest of the convoy?" she asks, scanning the corn field for any more surprises. Vermell doesn't answer.

"Sergeant Vermell-" Schnee repeats, turning to him. His head is hanging limply out the shattered window. His blood is beginning to build up on the seat, spilling onto the floor.

That's when Schnee's brain starts to try and make sense of the battle; how the sniper pinned them down, how they were ambushed, how she killed multiple Faunus in cold blood; how someone's life ended mere inches from her. She wonders if he left any pain, or if he was able to hold on for a few more seconds, trying to call out to her for help, but couldn't because he was choking on his own-

Schnee's hands begin to shake the steering wheel, her feet go numb, her stomach twists itself into multiple knots, and she starts to black out. She shakes herself out of it.

"Be an officer, prove your capability, then you can have my company." She reminds herself. Timidly, she talks into her radio.

"Sitrep," she says simply.

"Everyone from Eagle 2 is KIA," Keltan reports soberly. "Eagle 3 lost a lot of its supplies and half its squad. Looks like Eagle 1's cargo is mostly intact. The Paladin crew presumed KIA."

"Radio in a set of Bullheads for extraction. We're not taking this road any longer than we have to."

Schnee wipes some blood of the rearview mirror, adjusts it to see the battered truck behind her, and tries not to look at the Sergeant next to her.


	4. Chapter 4: Black

**UFF Territory, Bloodhound Forest**

**02:45 hours**

Second Lieutenant Belladonna's squad finishes their approach to the crash site through the woods, and gives her troops behind her the signal to halt, and they crouch down.

"Crow 4-2 Actual, this is Crow 3-1 Actual, over," she says into her radio. Multiple other squads of the 54th Airborne Regiment also stay hidden in the forest, surrounding the target.

"Copy, 3-1, this is 4-2 Actual, go ahead," says the receiver, Captain Svart.

"I've got eyes on the target. Nothing's moving inside, over."

"Roger that, Bell. Maintain your position. Anything moves, you are authorized to fire."

"Copy, Actual. Out." Bell moves her hand from her radio to her night vision goggles and lifts them up for a moment.

Due to being so far south of the equator, Federation territory is seasonally the darkest lands of Remnant. Being well over 30 miles behind enemy territory was no exception. Without night vision goggles for assistance, all any human could see was the shadows of the surrounding trees, partially illuminated by the faint fire coming from the destroyed helicopter.

On the other hand, Bell isn't exactly a human.

Bell puts the goggles back on and uses the zoom function to study the crash site: The Faunus-built DY-43 Creeper helicopter is broken into two main parts; the cabin, and the tail. The tail sustained the most damage, and is scattered into a dozen different pieces on the forest floor. The cabin, on the other hand, remains mostly intact. Both pilots are visibly dead, their bloody corpses still strapped into their seats. The main body of the craft is dented and broken in multiple places. The main rotors have been shortened from their original length of 55 feet to an average of 15, and lay in pieces alongside the tree branches that they sliced up on the chopper's way down. The whole scene reeks of fuel and burning wood.

"Crow 3-1 Actual, this is Crow 4-2 Actual, over," Svart says over the radio.

"Copy, 4-2 Actual, over," Bell replies.

"I just got off the horn with Command. They want us to confirm ID of the target. If it's our bird, we're to torch it immediately. Go check it out, Bell."

"Roger that, 4-2, we're oscar mike." Bell immediately throws several hand signals to her squadmates, rearranging them into a wider formation, and begins closing in on the target, weapon raised.

Just as Bell's squad reaches the edge of the small open field that the Creeper created on its journey down, where a large spruce has been chopped in half, the top laying next to its stump, she signals them to halt again. She observes the scene again. She's surprised that, even after surviving a direct hit from an AIM-9 Sidewinder missile, tumbling into a tightly packed forest, and the remaining fuel supply erupting into a fiery blaze, the emblem of the White Fang is still visible on the upper back of the cabin.

"Crow 4-2 Actual, this is Crow 3-1. Target is confirmed. Repeat, target is White Fang."

"Roger that, 3-1. Close in on the cabin, check for survivors, and rig the explosives."

"Roger, 4-2. Out." Bell has just raised her hand to signal her squad to move up.

"Scratch my last, 3-1. Repeat, scratch my last," Svart quickly orders. "Shit, get back, get back!" Bell immediately signals to fall back and go prone, and then does so herself."

"Talk to me, Svart," she says.

"White Fang to your two o'clock." Bell takes off her goggles and looks to her right. She can make out close to eight white uniforms in the trees. More are sure to be close.

"Do we engage?" Bell asks. Two of the White Fang walk out in the open and appear to talk to each other.

"Negative, everyone hold your fire. They're probably doing the same as us; checking for

survivors. We'll let them pass and continue our mission."

"Copy." Bell slowly moves farther back into the forest and lays down behind a tree, iron sights lined up on a White Fang's head.

She thinks back to the day when the White Fang first got their official uniforms. Before, they were still just wearing civilian clothing, usually white shirts, black pants, and red handkerchiefs tied to their arms and legs, almost like gang signs. In reality, they weren't much better than thugs back then. The new leadership had just been put into power, and they made sure their troops were well equipped. When the uniforms reached her cell, everyone's spirits were boosted.

The White Fang didn't just buy old equipment, they created a whole new uniform, the White Fang Combatant (WFC). Included was the WFC Vest; a white, armless, bullet proof vest, with patches for their designated cell number, squad number, name, and White Fang insignia; the WFC Touser, which are essentially customized white cargo pants with two velcro pockets on either leg and a built in plastic pistol holster that can be moved to either leg; WFC Combat Boots, which are black hiking boots with soles that moderate the temperature to make the wearer as comfortable as possible; and, most importantly, the WFC Combat Mask, a standard black SPECTRA helmet with a mask attached to the front. The mask is grey in color, with two slits for each eye, and are angled downward, ending with a point just below the nose. They symbolize the Human Coalition's decision to label the Faunus as monsters, and wear the masks as a reminder of humanity's ignorance.

Bell deserted not long after that.

Suddenly, one of the White Fang launches a flair into the sky. The entire forest is illuminated by the dark red light, and Bell can now see that there aren't just eight WF; there are close to twenty. The one that launched the flare points at Bell's position.

"We're made, weapons free!" Svart shouts. Bell fires, and the White Fang falls over. His comrade raises his weapon and sprays bullets at her position. Wood starts exploding, sending splinters in every direction. Bell turns to her squad, who have begun returning fire.

"Fire and move!" she shouts to them. "Fire Team 1, stay, Fire Team 2, move!" Half of the soldiers get up and run deeper into the woods while the other half hold their positions as more WF troops emerge from the trees.

"All Crow units, this is Crow 4-2 Actual," Svart shouts on the radio. The WF are making their way to the chopper. Bell takes out two of them and her gun clicks. She moves back behind a tree to reload. "Fall back to the rendezvous point. Repeat, fall the hell back!"

"Fall back, squad," Bell repeats to her troops, and they release a final burst of ammunition and run into the woods. Bell is about to join them when she notices activity by the chopper. Even though there were more WF joining the fight, she takes a chance, crouches down behind a tree, and takes aim.

Suddenly, the door of the downed helicopter is slid open, and a passenger attempts to climb out. Bell fills his skull with bullets. Two more passengers, without missing a beat, jump five feet into the air out of the Creeper as their comrade's body is still crumpling, and make a mad dash into the woods.

Yep, definitely Faunus.

"4-2 Actual, I got two bogeys escaping the chopper," she says into her radio. She raises her weapon to fire on them, but they're already getting consumed by the waves of white uniforms.

"Too late to do anything about it," Svart replies. "We can't break through them." Without hesitation, Bell takes out a smoke grenade and pulls the pin, counts silently in her head, and throws it into no man's land. It starts spewing bright grey smoke in between her and the approaching WF the moment it touches the ground."

"I'll circle around and pursue, out," she says, and clicks off her radio. As long as she kills them, she should escape her CO with a slap on the wrist and nothing else, and she really wants to kill them.

When the WF soldiers try to walk through the smoke screen, she tosses a flashbang at them, waits for the bang, and bolts from the tree.

There fire is mostly sporadic, 90% of the bullets flying in every direction but hers, but the remaining 10% send dirt and bark flying up around her, some of the bullets impacting inches from her feet or face; but she doesn't turn to fight, just keep running, faster and faster, putting as much cover between her and the attackers, and less distance between her and the passengers, as she can.

After about ten minutes of following the trail of flattened grass and broken twigs that the fleeing Faunus left, she is sure that the WF grunts lost her long ago, if they even knew where she was in the first place, that is. Now, she puts all her effort into catching up to her targets. She assumes that they can't be that farther ahead, them assuming their safety behind their front lines. Of course, they've most likely never been chased by one of their own.

Sure enough, the trail of debris begins to slow down, and Bell is face to face with the two Faunus as she rounds a tree.

One is a plump high ranking Federation Officer, bent over and covered in sweat, trying to catch his breath. The other appears to be his bodyguard, judging by the dominantly black uniform. Most likely WF Special Forces. Luckily for Bell, he's not looking in her direction when she approaches.

The officer's eyes widen as Bell instinctively unloads half her mag into his torso, then aims at the bodyguard.

"Don't move," she commands. He whipped around when the Fed fell, but now slowly raises his hands over his head.

"Why didn't I fire?" Blake's head asks herself. She and the rest of the paratroopers were given strict orders to kill, not capture. This Faunus is no different than any of the others she's killed tonight.

But, as she takes a closer look, she realizes he's not. The customized red markings of his mask; the natural, harsh frown on his firm mouth; the ceremonial red sword slung around his waist; his perfected professional stance, as if he's preparing to pounce. Then, a light goes off in Bell's head.

_It's him._

The Faunus cocks his head to one side when he notices Bell's grip on her rifle begin to waver.

"Are...who are you?" he asks slowly. Bell juts her rifle barrel forward, refilled with vigor. "Is..is that you, B?"

"Shut up," she says. His frown slowly turns into a smirk.

"After all this time," he says, lowering his hands, respectively keeping them in front of his front, away from his sword. "This is how we meet again."

"Guess so." His frown quickly returns, and he takes a step forward. Bell doesn't move.

"Alright, shoot me," he says.

Bell touches her finger to the trigger, but stops. Why did she stop?

"I know your superiors want no survivors. Just finish it."

Bell slowly starts to apply pressure to the trigger. She's holding her breath.

The Faunus takes off his mask and drops it in the pool of blood of the officer. He stares daggers at Bell with his dark black eyes.

"It's been a good run, B, I have to admit. I guess it had to end sometime."

Bell breathes out, then breathes in again. She tries to force the trigger down, but it's still holding back.

"Goodbye, B," the Faunus says, and closes his eyes.

Bell's mind travels back years prior, well over a decade. How she and him first met; how they survived lives as refugees in a border country, descendants of a long line of people left for dead. How he taught her how to fight, and how she followed him wherever he went, even to a White Fang cell.

And most of all, how even after all he's done, and all she's been through, she still can't consider him as an enemy.

She flips on the safety and lowers her rifle. The Faunus opens his eyes and sighs.

"Still don't have it in you, do you?" he asks. She flips the safety back off and fire at his feet. He barely flinches, but his eyes tell her he understands.

"I never want to see you again," she says sternly. He nods.

"You will," he says.

"Doubtful." He lets out a chuckle.

"Good luck keeping them from knowing, B," he says, and takes off sprinting in the other direction. Bell watches him until he's out of eyesight.

She knows that he's right; he won't stop his personal crusade until his last breath, but for just one moment, she imagines that she actually won't ever lay eyes on him again.

_Goodbye, Adam_


	5. Chapter 5: Yellow

**Border Country, codenamed Hunter Breach**

**04:16 hours**

"Disembark, platoon," Lieutenant Zlato shouts from the passenger seat of the M939, banging on the thick metal door. The 2nd Platoon of the VAF 4th Infantry Division climbs out of the med of the truck as it rolls to a stop. Among them is

Staff Sergeant Xiao Long. She scans the small Faunus shanty town with her deep purple eyes.

"Wait, this is it?" she asks. As far as border country villages go, this one is on the more malnourished side. Almost all of the buildings in the 500 ft. long town are constructed out of scrap metal, old vehicle parts, rebuilt rubble, plywood, and logs. Many of the houses are on top of rusting shipping containers, which have been there since the First Human-Faunus War; the original structures of the village, populated by 1st generation refugees. Tires and burn barrels are visibly lit, and the entire town reeks of bodily waste.

The only properly constructed buildings are the local police station, whose members have fled since the start of the war, and the Atlesian Army military outpost. Even though it stands only two stories high, it looks like a grand cathedral compared to the Faunus slums it surrounds. Atlesian Shock Troopers, the elite "lightning men" of the AA that were the spearhead of Atlas' fighting force, guard and patrol the dirty streets and bleach white checkpoint of the village.

"Never seen poverty, Sergeant?" Zlato asks sarcastically as he studies a map.

"I have, Sir, it's just that…shit, these people don't look good," Xiao responds. Only a few Faunus walk the torn up streets, keeping close to the buildings and ducking in and out of alleyways every time a Shock Trooper looked in their direction. Most of the traffic is above, where the Faunus use their heightened physical abilities to jump from rooftop to rooftop, the kids racing from the top of the tallest structures back to the top again. Apparently they used to be able to clear the whole street with a running start, but the AA don't allow it and shoot any that do it on site.

Wherever they are, they look exhausted. They wear heavily used and torn clothing, boots held together by tape, either hoods or hats pulled close to their eyes, and, most surprisingly of all, military gear. Not anything like the VAF or AA troops are wearing, mostly stuff that's been around since the First Human-Faunus War; old M1 and M36 helmets filled with dents and bullet holes, stitched up combat vests, looted gear from the police station, and various forms of eye protection, from cheap sunglasses to welding and ski goggles. The start of the war signaled most of the native border population to switch to their long stored militia wardrobe. Fortunately for the Coalition troops, Feds always wear uniforms, so civilian casualties are low; or supposed to be, anyway.

"Who are you guys?" a Shock Trooper asks Xiao and her platoon. The insignia for a captain is printed in black on the front of his blue and white helmet. A blue balaclava covers his face and an OLED targeting system over his right eye.

"I'm Lieutenant Svart, 2nd Platoon, 4th Infantry Division, Vale Armed Forces," Svart answers. "We're here on a mission to clear out a local Federation safe house."

"Sorry, this sector is completely empty of the Feds. We finished here weeks ago."

"So I guess it wouldn't hurt if we took a look around anyway?" Even with only one eye visible, Xiao could detect the glare in the Shock Trooper.

"Alright, go ahead. Just don't get in the way of my guys."

"I'll keep it in mind. Move out," Svart says to his platoon. The VAF soldiers fan out and slowly walk down the street.

Already bored by another search and destroy mission, Xiao kills time by studying the uniforms of the AA troops. In addition to the OPSEC lenses and Ops-Core helmets, each soldier wears a blue undershirt and trousers made 100% out of woven kevlar, starch white Interceptor Body Armor (IBA) covering their torso, modified with magazine pouches on the front and a stainless steel plate concealed inside, a utility belt that carries their pistol magazines, radio, first aid kit, MREs, and grenades, white pistol holder, knee pads and boots. And, of course, their ACR and Vector assault rifles and sling over their shoulders, and their Glock 22 pistols holstered on their hips.

Yang groans as she shifts the weight of her heavy M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle (IAR) to make herself less uncomfortable. "_Why the hell do we have to carry around all this old junk while Atlas gets special forces gear?"_ She thinks. She and her platoon are stuck with old and clunky PASGET body armor that was developed during peacetime, and has yet to be battle tested on a large scale. At least their weapons, M4s and HK416s for her platoon members and her LMG and Benelli M4 shotgun, are still reliable in this day and age. Xiao silently curses the radical militaristic Atlas government that showers the AA with a ridiculous budget.

"Sergeant Xiao, Private Alza," Svart calls out to her and a young brunette woman with teal eyes, and points passed Xiao, down an alleyway. "Take that route and make your way back to us.

"Yes, Sir," she and Alza says, and two soldiers veer their course in between the grey and brown shacks as Svart barks similar orders to the rest of the platoon.

"This really sucks," Xiao complains as they walk down the alley. Ther boots are stepping on more trash and debris than remnant.

"Why?" Alza asks. She was conscripted only four months ago, and was deployed last week, so she's yet to experience the daily routine that Xiao has been going through for the past two months.

"These missions are a waste of time," Xiao says. They turn a corner and move deeper into the village. A nearby door opens and a child begins to step out, but freezes in place when he sees the soldiers. An adult Faunus, presumably his mother, steps in front of him and slams the door shut.

"Taking out Federation hideouts is a waste of time?"

"Oh, no. That would be a great way to fight the Feds and reduce their foothold on the border countries. The only problem is that there's never any Feds where we're sent. Atlas always clears them out. Some high ranking pogue trying to show off to the AA."

"And you've been doing this since the war started?" Alza asks.

"Since the VAF sent us here, yeah."

"Well, at least it's easy, right?"

"Sure, it's easy. I don't want easy. I want to get some action, hear the bullets zip by, artillery land next to me. I want to spill some Faunus blood. The guys in Viktor Speeder are getting hell thrown at them. I heard one platoon got ambushed by a whole company and were completely slaughtered, and the Feds painted their half destroyed truck with their blood. And another time, I heard that the Feds used their dead and dying as meat shields to try and overrun a human position-" Xiao stops when she realizes that Alza wide eyed, shaking, and as pale as a ghost.

"On the other hand," Xiao says, switching gears. "Easy isn't all that bad. Actually, it's pretty good. Warm shower and bunk every night, right?"

"Yeah, right," Alza nervously chuckles.

They walk into walk looks like a small courtyard, across from where five shipping containers, four next to each other and one on top of the rest, are welded together and act as one large building. It's probably the largest structure in the whole village.

"Svart should be just across from here," Alza says, pointing and walking towards another alleyway. Suddenly, something catches Xiao's eye. "If we just go down-"

"Come here, come here," Xiao says hastily, walking passed towards the center of the courtyard, looking through a large pile of destroyed pallets and crates and trash, a mere five feet in front of the building. "Don't look directly, but do you see that Faunus on top of the roof, my nine o'clock?" Alza awkwardly turns around, then back again.

"Yeah, what about him?" she asks.

"His clothes are too clean, no military gear, standing out in the middle of the open. He's a disguised Fed."

"A Fed?" Alza whispers frantically. Xiao pretends to pick through the garbage, and Alza copies her.

"Shit, I didn't actually think we'd see one," Xiao says.

"So why are you smiling?" Alza asks.

"Because we're actually gonna do something this war."

"Well, what _are_ we gonna do?" Xiao thinks for a moment.

"Well, where there's a Fed, there's a Fed building," she says. She looks at the building ahead.

"Bingo, see that graffiti on the top shipping container?" she says. Alza nods slowly when she spots the black circle with two triangles inside of it. "It's not graffiti, it's a simplified insignia of a Federation unit."

"Should we call for backup?"  
>"No, that Fed behind us is watching everything we do. We gotta do this alone, or at least hold out long enough for them to come to us."<p>

"Alright, I'm game," Alza says, albeit fidgeting fingers and feet, but Xiao trusts her to keep her cool.

"Ok, you think you can pop that Fed in one shot."

"Of course, that's only like 20 feet."

"Good. When I tell you, take him out while I flashbang the front door. Fall in on me when you're done with him, then we move through the building, breach and clear each room."

"Roger that." Alza slowly moves her shooting hand to the trigger of her HK416.

"Ready?"

"Ready." Xiao takes a deep breath, unslings her IAR, and drops it to reduce weight and keep it from getting in her way.

"Go," she orders, and immediately turns and walks towards the building while Alza whips around and raises her rifle.

Xiao lifts up her shotgun and blows off the lock of the container as three gunshots let loose behind her, all from Alza's rifle. Xiao takes out a flashbang, pulls the pin, rip the door of the container open, chuck it inside, and moves to the side of the container as Alza joins her. The grenade goes off, and they move inside together.

There are five UFF soldiers inside, all of them covering their eyes and ears and staggering around the tight space, the effects of the grenade completely controlling them. Xiao expertly takes out three of them with three shotgun rounds while Alza finishes the last two off with a burst of rifle rounds. Xiao uses hand signals to tell Alza to move behind cover. When she does so, she advances.

An old wooden door, which must have been put in place of a whole in the container, flies open and three Faunus spill out. Alza is able to take down one before they open fire on her, pinning her down. Xiao has already crouched down where she was and sent pellets at them. One falls on top of the first as the other is only wounded and moves back inside his container.

"Suppress him!" Xiao shouts. The door from a third shipping container slowly opens directly in front of her, and she dives onto it, slamming it shut again. She stands up, raises her shotgun, and fires her final two shotgun shells into the wooden door, blowing the lower half into splinters. She drops the empty shotgun and takes out her pistol as Alza opens fire again.

"He's down!" she shouts.

"Cover me!" Xiao shouts back, and kicks in the remains of the door, not wanting to waste time looking through the hole in the door first.

She steps on top of the bloodied bodies of two Faunus and looks around the room. It must be their rec room, but food, tables and chairs, and…

"_Why is only one table turned over?"_ she thinks to herself, but it doesn't take her long to figure out why. A Fed pops out from behind the table and raises his MTAR-21 over his head. Xiao sidesteps just as he shoots, and shoots herself, unloading her mag at him as the zipping sounds of bullets missing her skull by a handful of inches fills her ears.

The Faunus is struck at least five times by her pistol and falls over dead, but not before his last bullet strikes Xiao in the shoulder. Her outdated body armor takes most of the damage, but the sheer force of the bullet throws her against the wall, like a punch thrown by an invisible enemy.

She grimaces through the pain as she reloads her pistol, and looks down at her wound. She can feel the bullet when she shifts her shoulder. It feels like it's caught in the layer layer of her armor, stopping just before reaching her skin. Even so, it stings like a bitch.

She reloads her pistol and steps out into the doorway. She's about to shout to Alza to move to the final door, when she spots her, laying where she last saw her, her pool of blood slowly growing. Two Feds, one inspecting Alza's corpse and the other standing near the last door, which is now open, don't notice her at first.

Xiao's rage releases a new surge of adrenaline, blocking the pain in her shoulder completely. She grits her teeth and shoots the Fed near Alza in the head, dropping him on top of her. She immediately turns and unloads the rest of her mag on the final Faunus, who is caught in the leg on the first bullet and falls behind a body, which absorbs the rest of the bullets.

But Xiao isn't done yet. She won't allow Alza to die so soon for nothing, for one safehouse that shouldn't even exist. She'll make this fucker useful.

She walks over to him, picks him up, and slams him against the wall.

"I surrender!" he shrieks. Xiao starts digging in one of her pickets while holding him by the throat.

"You have less than two minutes to tell me exactly what I know before my platoon can stop me from killing you," she says monotonously. She pulls out an old photograph of a woman in military gear holding an LMG. She's wearing First Human-Faunus War era gear, and it's heavily creased from being folded and unfolded so many times. She shoves it in the face of the Faunus.

"Where is she?" she asks angrily.

"What the fuck, I don't know!" he says. Xiao slams him against the wall again. He cries out in pain.

"Look harder!" she shouts. The Faunus spits in her face.

"Fuck you, human scum!" he shouts. "Just fucking kill me already!" Xiao unsheathes her knife.

"Oh, now you got balls, huh?" she says. She stretches out one of the Fed's arms, and stabs his hand into the wall. The Faunus yells at the top of his lungs in pain as blood drips down the metal wall.

"Show me the fucking picture," he says through gritted teeth. She holds it up again, and the Faunus studies it like his life depends on it.

"One minute," Xiao reminds him.

"I've never seen her before in my life, I swear!" he tells her. His resistance lessens as he loses strength.

"Tell me who knows," Xiao says. "She was special forces, a POW during the First War."

"I'm a Captain, how should I-" Xiao takes the knife out, and the Fed cries out in pain again as his blood flows freely. He forms it into a fist and holds it against his chest. Blood oozes out in between his fingers.

"It goes in your throat next if you don't give me an answer now," Xiao threatens, holding the blade against the Faunus' chest.

"Someone in the intelligence branch would know, that's I can tell you, I swear!"

"Give me a name." When the Fed hesitates, Xiao presses the blade to his throat.

"Colonel Tukson! Colonel Tukson was an intelligence specialist during the First War. He retired shortly after."

"Where is he now?"

"Sergeant Xiao?" Svart calls out from outside. Xiao stares daggers at the Fed with her red eyes.

"I don't know, it's in the records." Satisfied, Xiao slams him into the wall one final time and lets him fall to the floor as Svart and the rest of the platoon enters the structure.

"Oh shit, medic!" Svart shouts, and a combat medic rushes to Alza and pulls the Faunus off of her. "Sitrep, Sergeant!" he says to Xiao. She slowly puts away the knife and picture.

"UFF safehouse discovered and raided. Twelve Feds and one friendly KIA, one Fed captured" she says as calmly as she can. The medic stands up and shakes his head, confirming it.

"Shit," Svart says. "Well, good job killing that many of the bastards anyway. Where's the captured one?" Xiao steps to the side.

"I surrender," the Faunus murmurs.

"Get him out of my face," Svart orders, and two platoon members haul him away as Shock Troopers flood the courtyard outside. "You good, Sergeant?" Xiao looks down as the medic covers Azla with a blanket, and feels the picture inside her pocket.

"_Colonel Tukson," _her mind repeats over

and over again.

"Yes, Sir," she answers. "I'm good."


	6. Chapter 6: Formation

**UFF Capital City, Netvorville**

**23:44 hours**

Roman Torchwick watches the headlights of the approaching humvee grow brighter through the thick rain.

Except for emergency lights, Netvorville is completely dark, curfew and electricity rationing already in effect. There are military checkpoints at every major intersection, loudspeaker set up to broadcast propaganda and air raid sirens, which are tested in a city-wide drill every two weeks. The privately owned cars have been replaced by city buses, used to ferry factory workers to their jobs, where they build the machines that fight the humans. Roman smiles to himself. He had just gotten back from a job in the Kingdoms and, he must admit, the Faunus are taking this war a lot more seriously than the humans right now.

The humvee pulls over to the curve in the thick downpour and the door swing open. He climbs in without hesitation, pulling the door closed as the black military vehicle immediately speed away.

"You're late," Roman says to the woman across from him, taking off his bowler hat and brushing the water off.

"I thought for sure the Federation's most successful organized crime mobster would keep better track of time," the woman says. She has shoulder length black hair, bright orange eyes, combat boots, a grey trench coat, and assumably a short dress underneath. She sizes Roman up with a smirk. "Especially with a war on the horizon. Business is booming."

"Yeah, about that…" Roman replies, putting his hat back on. "If you could give me a few updates concerning your undoubtedly masterful plan, including that part where you declared war on all of fucking humanity, I might be able to deal more damage to Coalition forces." The woman leans forward, smirk gone.

"I hope you're not suggesting that you should be put in charge of my operation," she growls.

_"Goddamn, this woman is a bitch," _Roman thinks to himself.

"Of course not," he says aloud. "I'm just saying that if you're putting me and the White Fang in charge of stirring shit up in the border countries, then I'd like a heads up whenever something big changes. Believe it or not, my steel was actually tested when you triggered an open conflict and allowed the Kingdoms to send thousands of soldiers, tanks, and helicopters into my business. Do you know how hard it is to go from bootleg alcohol and dust to whole battalions of tanks in 24 hours? Speaking of which, I have a sale on a battalion of tanks right now. Buy seven, get one free."

"I'm not here to listen to your drivel, Roman," the woman says.

"Yeah, I get that a lot," Roman says. "So...why am I here exactly?"

"We're advancing to phase two."

"Oh, there's a phase two? I didn't even know there was a phase one."

"The VAF is pulling out some new cards. So, you're done being a petty thief for the time being."

"Petty thief? Hey, I have feelings, you know. Not a lot, but they're there. Occasionally."

"Just give me all of your dust, weapons, and everything else on the black market, and focus the White Fang's efforts on fighting the Coalition troops. The Federation will be completely funding you for the rest of the war."

"Sounds exciting," Roman says, leaning back in his seat. "Alright, I can get behind being a warlord for a while. Anything else?"

"Yes, I'm going to need a few of your best people. Like, let's say, that girl that's always smiling?"

"Well, technically, she's not actually smiling, but yes, I know what you mean."

"Give me a list of people like her. I have a specific job for them."

"Roger that." The humvee stops at a street corner. Roman opens the door and begins to step out, but stops. "By the way, those 'cards' the VAF has that you mentioned; they wouldn't happen to be those squads of soldiers with self-repairing armor that the White Fang keeps reporting about, does it?"

"Get out, Roman."

_"So, yes."_

"Seriously, think about the tanks," he says as he gets back out into the soaking rain. "I need to get them out of my warehouse." The woman shuts the door herself, and the humvee speeds away.

* * *

><p><strong>HCS Wounded Angel airship, HKC airspace<strong>

**14:29 hours**

"General Ozpin," Ozpin's secretary says over the phone. "Private Rose has arrived."

"Send her in," he replies.

"I still don't see why you want to see her personally," Glynda comments.

"Me neither, but let's see," Ozpin says. The door opens, and a young, pale woman with black hair tinted red, silver eyes, and an expression of anxiety on her face enters. She salutes, which Ozpin returns.

"At ease," he says. Rose complies. Her eyes are looking straight forward, but occasionally dart from one object in the room to the next. "Take a seat, Private," he says, gesturing to the chair in front of him. The girl hesitantly sits down. She immediately starts fidgeting with her fingers on her lap.

"Um, permission to speak, Sir?" Rose asks.

"Permission granted," Ozpin replies.

"Well, it's just that, uh, if this is about the Battle of Camp Signal, which I assume it is, uh, I'm not exactly sure why I'm here. I mean, I filled out a report, two reports actually, uh, wait, how many reports? Anyway, I filled out some reports, told my CO everything that happened, and that was two months ago, so...am I in trouble, Sir?" Ozpin glances at Glynda, who rolls her eyes.

"No, Private Rose, you're not in trouble," Ozpin reassures the young soldier. He picks up a file marked "CONFIDENTIAL"; Rose's bio report. "Now before we continue, let me get this straight. At approximately 04:20 hours on August 4th, you and your platoon was woken up for an early morning drill at Camp Signal. For reasons made unclear to me, you were late to reporting to the mess hall when it was destroyed by multiple explosive devices by Federation soldiers, losing your entire unit in the process. Moments later, a company of Faunus infantry advanced through the northwest portion of the base, close to where you were, and fired on the base's occupants. The HCS Airwalker, the Templar airship that was intended to be your transportation to your drill, detected multiple large heat signatures believed to be heavy anti-air missile launchers, and the captain decided to abandon the base, not wanting to get taken down without being any help to the base. In reality, the Faunus faked the heat signatures in order to protect their ground force, which would be vulnerable to that type of firepower. Sometime in between the initial attack and the Airwalker bugging out, you took it upon yourself to sprint out of the base, avoiding heavy gunfire, and across the desert, wearing heavy military clothing and boots, for nearly an hour, nonstop. You get close enough to signal the airship with your flare, they send a Bullhead to pick you up, and you, nearly unconscious from exhaustion, inform the crew chief that the Faunus have no anti-air. The crew chief passes it along to the Airwalker's captain, who turns back around, doesn't get shot down, and moves in to assist the survivors still in the base." There's a brief silence.

"Um, yes Sir, you're correct, all of it," Rose says.

"Would I also be correct in saying that you are the reason that the 674 survivors of Camp Signal are still alive?"

"Uh...I don't know, Sir. I was just doing my job, Sir," Rose says quietly.

"You sprinted full speed for an hour straight with three pound weights on each foot. Most other soldiers wouldn't survive fifteen mikes, but you lasted sixty."

"Well, I have been running for my whole life, I ran on the high school track team, practiced in my spare time and whatnot. I guess that's why I chose to sign up for a scout sniper, because I already knew I could run, and I got pretty good with a rifle from hunting with my uncle. Oh yeah, that and my uncle is Lieutenant Qrow from the First War, and he helped me prepare for what is expected from a scout sniper and everything." Rose suddenly goes silent when she realizes she's rambling. Ozpin smiles.

"Why do you fight, Private Rose?" he asks simply. Rose gives him a perplexed look.

"I'm sorry, Sir. I don't really understand what you're asking," she says.

"Why did you join the Vale Armed Forces? I'm assuming you've already been told this, but you're still more a civilian than a soldier, but have the skills better than a lot of the soldiers."

"Oh," Rose murmurs, then says louder and with more confidence, "I wanted to help people."

"Why not a civilian job? Why did you choose to risk your life?" Rose takes a moment to gather her thoughts.

"Well, I've always wanted to help people, but I never really thought about it until my uncle brought it up. Sure, I kept myself fit and knew discipline, teamwork, how to use and care for a rifle, and everything else. But I also have another person in my family that fought in the First War."

"Major Summer Rose, your mother," Ozpin answers in the bio report's exact words. Rose momentarily gives him a quizzical look, but nods.

"Yes, my mother. She gave birth to me five years into the war after gaining popularity as a rear echelon commander. From what I've heard, she fought tooth and nail to be able to keep me and stay in the military. I'm only a Kingdom citizen because I was born on an FOB in Faunus territory. I was immediately shipped back to Patch, where my father lived."

"He didn't fight in the war?" Ozpin asks, even though he already knows the answer.

"No, he fought in the regiment my mother served in, which was where they met and how I was conceived, I guess. But he left when my mother was about five months pregnant with me, but I don't know the reason," Rose answers. Ozpin knows the reason. Dishonorable discharge. "Anyway, my mother stayed on the frontlines, I'm guessing planning on raising me as soon as the war ended. But then, she...disappeared, pronounced MIA around the time I was three. The Feds never released their full prisoner reports, so she could still be alive, but I'm not waiting for her anymore."

Rose grows quiet for a second, staring down at her fidgeting hands. Ozpin looks to Glynda again, who still looks stern, but less exasperated.

"So I guess what I'm getting at," Rose continues. "Is that, if my mom was willing to give up motherhood in order to keep me safe and fight in the trenches, then that's the kind of help I want to give, if not for my kingdom, then for the people I love. I guess I fight to find out why my mom did what she did, why she thought for everything else before herself." Ozpin waits a moment before speaking.

"Do you know who I am?" he asks.

"General Ozpin, base commander of Fort Beacon," Ruby answers.

"Correct. I'm also the founder and senior commander of Project Hunter, a newly established special forces unit. We're making good progress, but I want to build more teams. Do you want to be part of one?"

"I'm sorry, Sir?" Rose says, surprised. "Aren't I supposed to volunteer for one and pass physical and mental exercises before I'm even considered for special forces?"

"Not this one. I want you exactly the way you are right now. You will go through special ops training once you're with your teammates. The Hunter Program focuses greatly on teamwork, so it's important you begin and end training together. You can also use whatever gear you choose, including some prototype gear not in mass production yet." Rose sits back in her chair, overwhelmed.

"Will I get front line combat?" she asks.

"You'll be getting everything thrown at you. But trust me when I say that I wouldn't have my entire faith in you surviving anything you'd face if we weren't talking right now." Rose looks down again and nods.

"Alright, I'm in," Rose says. "When do I start?"

"Report back to your CO, we'll forward your deployment location and further instructions to him. Dismissed," Ozpin says. Rose stands up, salutes, and opens the door of the office.

"Oh, and Private," Ozpin says. The young girl turns around. "Say hi to your uncle for me." Rose blinks, but doesn't seem to be surprised by Ozpin's mysterious history anymore.

"Will do, Sir," she answers, and leaves the office. Glynda stands up, scroll in hand.

"Well, she's a lot tougher than I gave her credit for, I'll admit that," she says. "So, does she qualify for the roster?"

"Make her team leader," Ozpin says without hesitation.

"Sir?" Glynda says, surprised.

"Something wrong, Lieutenant General?" he asks.

"No, Sir. I just don't understand. She's obviously fit for combat as a Hunter, maybe with some more disciplinary training perhaps, but otherwise fit. But do you really want the three other candidates for her squad to correlate with her bio report? Why not an experienced veteran, or at least an officer."

"You said the same thing when JNPR Squad was formed."

"And I still don't understand, sir." Ozpin sighs and refills his coffee mug.

"I don't expect you to understand how my algorithm works, but it's worked so far, and it'll work with Private Rose as team leader in the future."

"Yes, Sir," Glynda says. She presses a few buttons on her scroll, and Ozpin's scroll beeps. He picks it up and starts configuring the newly established Hunter squad.

"Let's see who your squadmates will be," he says to himself.


	7. Chapter 7: Code Names

**Fort Beacon, relocated at border country codenamed Viktor Speeder**

**09:56 hours**

Rose, now code named Ruby, cautiously walks to the doorway of the barracks and peers in. It looks empty except for four bunks. She looks at her papers, which she got from her CO eight hours ago and have held onto since, to make sure that she's in the right room.

She turns around and watches Fort Beacon slowly reconstruct itself at its new location. Transport trucks and jeeps haul in several tons of supplies and equipment. Paladins and Vale-built M1 Abrams main battle tanks, take the newly paved roads deeper inside the base. Bullheads fly overhead, some bringing in paratrooper units, others dangling large cargo containers below them. There are whole companies walking passed the barracks, but all in groups, no single soldiers like her.

She turns back around and walks in. It looks like someone started bringing in the bunks and footlockers, got bored, and moved on to the next building. What's strange are the ridiculously large lockers at the end of the barracks; there are four on the far wall that are shaped like large metal coffins. Each has a colored square; red, white, black, and yellow; on the center. There are also two long tables stacked with weapon crates and cases, all of them empty. Ruby assumes that's what General Ozpin meant by "whatever gear you choose." She and her squad will probably pick up their weapons later in the day.

_"If they get here,"_ she thinks to herself.

Ruby decides to go ahead and settle in. She unslings her heavy backpack from her shoulder, which carries everything she'd typically carry in her deployment as instructed by her papers, and her modified M200 sniper rifle, Crescent Rose. As she walks into the barracks and the backpack sways around her arm, it strikes a small, black gun case with a white snowflake sketched on the side stacked on top of a larger crate with a similar snowflake on the side that she didn't see by the door, and it falls to the floor with a thud. Ruby stares at it for a moment.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?" Schnee shrieks behind Ruby. Ruby yelps and whips around in surprise, her backpack half dragging her to the ground. A woman wearing an infantry officer's uniform with white bangs, hair done in a ball in the back, and a beret on her head. She looks angrily at Ruby, hands on her hips.

"I'm sorry!" Ruby squeaks, dropping her back and reaching for the fallen case.

"Atten-SHUN!" Schnee orders. Ruby gulps and stands at attention. "Don't you recognize an officer when you see one?" Schnee scoffs, pointing at her bars.

"Uh, permission to speak, Sir?" Ruby asks. Schnee's eyes darken.

"It's _Ma'am!_" she declares, fists clenched.

"Ma'am! Ma'am," Ruby quickly says. "I'm sorry but, who are you exactly? You're not wearing a name tape."

"Didn't you read the papers, _Private?_" Schnee asks, waving her own copy of instructions. "We're supposed to remove them, which you did, so why ask?" Without waiting for a response, she continues. "I am special operations member code named Weiss of the Hunter Program. Who the hell are you?"

"Ro-R-Ruby, S-Ma'am," Ruby stutters. "This _is _the Hunter Program, right?"

"I hope not," Xiao says from the doorway. Ruby looks over Weiss' shoulder and sees a large, fit woman in heavy combat gear, carrying a backpack identical to her own, and has long, golden hair flowing down to her shoulders. Her beaming lilac eyes peek under her LWH helmet.

"Note the bars, _Sergeant,_" Weiss says to her. Xiao takes her papers out of her backpack, then tosses the pack onto the nearest bed.

"Don't the papers say to disregard the current ranks of other Hunter Program members?" she says, pointing at the papers. Weiss hastily looks through her own papers, and her shoulders sag.

"Oh, I don't have time for this nonsense," she mumbles. She picks up the fallen box and turns to Ruby, who tenses up again. "Do you have any idea what this is?" Weiss asks the red haired girl.

"Well, it's in a box so, no not really," she says. Schnee flips the box open, and pulls out a large pistol.

It largely resembles a chrome desert eagle, but with an elongated barrel and a revolver cylinder located just above the trigger. There are colored stripes located around the cylinder, the colors Ruby can see being red, blue, white, and yellow.

"This is a MADR Myrtenaster Combat Pistol, a prototype pistol built by Schnee Armaments. There are only three in existence, and I am one of the few field testers." Weiss clicks the hammer and extra slot forward, and the whole barrel rotates down on a top-break action. Ruby can now see that the colored stripes are actually small vials of different colored dust. There are the additional colors of green, and black.

"It is the only small arms weapon in the world capable of Automatic Dust Adjustment Modifier technology. This gun can fire nine rounds with explosive, tracer, armor piercing, non-lethal, incendiary, and electric capabilities. The entire weapon costs eleven thousand Lien, and you're damn lucky you didn't damage it."

"I'm sure it was an accident," Xiao says. You shouldn't have put your gear that close to the entrance, anyway."

"I didn't! My former troops did!" Weiss protests. Xiao rolls her eyes, which land on Ruby. She quickly smiles. "Hi, what's your callsign?" she asks Ruby.

"Uh, Ruby," Ruby replies.

"Yang," Xiao replies, extending her hand. Ruby shakes it with a limp hand.

"Hey, I'm not done!" Weiss says. "I need to inspect your papers myself, Ruby, or whatever you call yourself."

"Uh, why?" Ruby asks.

"Because there's no way a clumsy inexperienced grunt like yourself could get into a special forces unit," Weiss says. "Spec ops isn't boot camp, Private. It's for experienced veterans who will be sent to the worst places of a war, and considering you can't even handle your pack with care, I wouldn't even trust you with a rifle."

"Hey, I said I was sorry!" Ruby says, gaining confidence from the friendliness of Yang. "And why shouldn't I check _your _papers?"

"How dare you!" Weiss shouts. "I am a Captain of the Vale Armed Forces. I commanded an infantry company in Counter Wind. I rose through the ranks and fight proudly for my country! What did you do, convince a rear-echelon officer that you could-"

"Officer on deck!" Bell shouts behind the three girls, who whip around to see Generals Ozpin and Goodwitch standing in the doorway. Immediately, the four soldiers scramble to the closest beds and stand at attention.

"How long was she standing there?" Yang murmurs to Ruby, eyeing the girl across from her. Her armor is a combination of black and woodland camouflage, has a black and white shemagh around her neck and an Airborne Division baseball cap on her ragged jet black hair.

"At ease," Ozpin says. The soldiers comply. Ozpin takes a step forward and pushes his glasses up.

"I'll keep to the point," he says. "You are here today because you have been selected to take part in a highly unorthodox special forces unit. Yes, you will be, after a month of specialized training at this base, shipped out to the front lines, fighting in some of the most horrid and lethal conditions known to exist on our Remnant. You will be armed with advanced gear not available to any other unit in the VAF, and you will go down in history as some of the most valuable assets of this war."

"But most of all, you will do all of these things as a team. You will become well acquainted with the three other Hunters in this room for the duration of this war and beyond. You will eat, sleep, work, and fight together. You will never leave your squadmates' side. Your team will never be divided."

"That is what you will live by as long as you are a Hunter. Be warned, you are allowed to leave the Hunter Program at any point and return to your former unit, but your team will automatically be disbanded. A Hunter is not replaceable. So if any of you are having doubts about the competence of you or the other members of your team, leave this barracks right now." The girls look between each other, especially Ruby and Weiss.

Weiss is at a crossroad; she doesn't trust the small sniper, but at the same time she doesn't want to jeopardize her status as a special forces operator.

"_Be a woman of the people."_

Well, she must've done something right to get in here, Weiss decides. She furrows her brow and slowly nods to Ruby, signaling a "stalemate" of sorts. Ruby thinks it over, and nods back.

"Very good," Ozpin says. "One final note about the Hunter Program; all are equal. You will retain the rank you held before joining the Hunter Program, but only on paper. Whether you were an officer or a grunt before, you are a Hunter now, and will treat each other as such. The only exception to this is the team leader, who will command the squad during combat and hold overall responsibility for the squad. But off the battlefield, there is no hierarchy or chain of command. And if one of you dies, for whatever reason, your team will automatically be disbanded. Understand, Hunters?"

"Sir, yes Sir!" the four girls reply in unison.

"Atten-SHUN!" Ozpin orders. The squad straightens up.

"Ruby, sniper. Weiss, assault. Blake, stealth. Yang demolition. You are RWBY Squad. The Vale Armed Forces salutes you." Ozpin salutes them, which the Hunters return. Glynda steps forward.

"Ruby," she says. "You are designated team leader. You and your squad report to the armory to select your weapons. Dismissed." The generals leave the barracks. Weiss and Ruby are staring wide-eyed at each other, Yang is holding in a laugh and just smiles, and Blake looks between the three girls, wondering what she missed.


	8. Chapter 8: Suit Up

**Fort Beacon Armory**

**10:19 hours**

The armory is everything Ruby dreamed it would be, and a little more.

The entire back wall is lined with lockers packed with M4s, HK416s, Beretta M12s, and a few more weapon families that supply the basic infantry units. Crates upon crates create aisles of weaponry like a supermarket. The bottom crates are things like .50 caliber heavy machine guns, anti-tank missiles, laser designators, and other equipment that will be the last to be unboxed and organized. The crates on the top, however, are open and showing off their high-end content.

Every weapon Ruby has seen in war posters, movies, photos, documentaries, and Uncle Qrow's cabinet is somewhere in this room; G36, ACR, XM8, Scar-H, HK33, and a whole range of AK assault rifles; Bizon, UMP, MP5, MP7, Uzi, and Vector submachine guns; LSAT, MG3, PKP, and M249 light machine guns; every bolt action and designated marksman rifle (DMR) has ever heard of are displayed brilliantly on racks on the wall, where Ruby immediately rushes over and looks them over like a kid at the candy store. She couldn't be happier.

"I can't believe it!" Weiss groans to Blake behind her.

Well, except for being team leader, of course.

"Can you believe that?" Weiss asks Blake, who's shifting through a crate of MP7s. "General Ozpin picked a private over a captain for being squad leader of a special forces unit? I went through Officer Academy, I commanded an infantry company in a border country, I have the experience, I'm the superior officer. Why on Remnant would the General trust a _grunt_?"

"It is a curious decision," Blake mumbles. She picks up an MP7 and walks over to a crate full of suppressors and screws on one.

"I mean, it's completely insane!," Weiss continues. "A private has absolutely no experience in leading other soldiers in combat. A leader needs to be able to keep a level head in a chaotic environment in order to keep the morale among the men up while consistently give out orders and keep the battle on your side. A private wouldn't know the first thing about any of that!"

"I'm sure General Ozpin has his reasons," Blake says. She attaches an Elcan Specter OS3.4x scope to the MP7, and starts looking around for more weapon attachments.

"This better be a test of some sort to see how I take it," Weiss says, now mostly to herself as Blake walks away. "And then I'll be given command of RWBY squad if I take it well. And I _will _take it well, of course. I won't allow a grunt to jeopardize the Hunter Program."

Being only a few crates away, Ruby hears every word, trying to distract herself by inspecting the different scout rifles proudly displayed on a wall, but to no avail. Yang notices while she's looking over a heavily modified striker shotgun, and walks over to Ruby.

"You know," Yang says. "I have a little sister that looks exactly like you."

"Uh, really?" Ruby asks, turning to Yang, who nods.

"Yeah. Hold on, I think I have a picture…" Yang digs through her back pocket, and pulls out a wad of photographs. She filters through them, and picks one out, giving it to Ruby. Besides having longer hair, bangs, and green eyes, Yang's sister could be mistaken for a twin sister of Ruby.

"Wow, you weren't kidding," Ruby says. "Is she in the military?"

"No, she tried running away with me, but that's not happening until hell freezes over." The two girls chuckle, and Ruby begins to forget about Weiss. Yang's mere presence is calming to her.

"So, do you have an idea of what rifle you want?" Yang asks.

"Oh, I already have one," Ruby says. She reaches behind her and unslings what looks like a thin, red and black box.

"Wait, what?" Yang says, bending down to take a closer look. "Is...is that a gun?"

"Yeah, it's an M200 Intervention," Ruby says. She pulls one part back, extending the stock, pulls the receiver forward, doubling its size and automatically raising the scope, and unfolds and extends the barrel, which has a bipod and flash suppressor attached. "I did a bit of modifying on it. I call her Crescent Rose."

"A _bit_?" Yang repeats. "You probably had to completely take it apart and put it back together half a dozen times."

"Not half a dozen...more like four, maybe five." She pulls a sling from behind her back. "I also made a custom sling so I can take it out and put it away quickly, while keeping it concealed behind me.

"This is incredible, Ruby. Why aren't you designing these for a living?" Yang asks. Ruby shrugs.

"I don't want to build weapons, I want to be in the fight, using them. Besides, my Uncle helped me with most of it. He's the real genius."

"It must run in the family," Yang says. "I guess between your wardrobe and weaponry, you aren't one for the uniform look, huh?"

"My wardrobe? Oh, you mean my hoodie?" Ruby is wearing a dark red hoodie underneath a black Outer Tactical Vest, urban camouflage cargo pants and black combat boots; only the boots are standard issue, everything else she had to scrounge for. "Yeah, I just feel a lot more comfortable with this on. I've had this particular hoodie since I joined up. I guess I really like the hoods."

"Yeah, I guess it could work if camouflaged correctly," Yang says. "But have you ever thought about a close range weapon?"

"Uh...what do you mean?"

"Like if a Fed sneaks up on you and Crescent Rose is too bulky to swing around in time?"

"Well, I always had my spotter, who is supposed to carry an assault rifle or carbine for that sort of thing, but…" Ruby's mind flashes to Penny, then the mess hall engulfed in flames.

"Try this," Blake says, holding out a weapon that looks like an M4 carbine with no stock. Ruby takes it in her hands and looks it over.

"What is it?" she asks. It looks like an M4 variant, but she has a feeling it isn't.

"PLR-16," Blake replies. "It's actually a pistol, but chambers 5.56 rounds. Thought it'd be good for close quarters combat."

"Yeah, I bet it will," Ruby says. She attaches the sling mount to her Crescent Rose sling, pulls it taut, and aims at the floor. "Thanks, Blake!" she says cheerily. Blake nods and walks to the other side of the armory, grabbing a few magazines for her SMG. Yang follows her.

"So…" she says to the quiet girl. "You get your weapons squared away?"  
>"Huh? Oh, yeah," Blake says, putting the mags in her vest. Yang reaches over and takes a handful of shotgun shells from a crate and begins feeding them into a bandolier.<p>

"What did you get?" Yang asks after a few minutes of silence. Blake puts her MP7 and a pistol with a suppressor attached on the table in front of her.

"Custom MP7 and a GSh-18 that I've had since forever," Blake says. The pistol's paint is chipped everywhere, and has the letters "BB" written in white market written on the grip. Eight tally marks are engraved on the barrel, and the words "GAMBOL SHROUD" are engraved on the suppressor.

"Oh, cool," Yang says. "Did you personally own the pistol before joining up? I don't think the VAF carries Faunus-made weapons."

"Yeah," Blake says bluntly, and quickly puts the pistol away again. Yang takes the hint and returns to her bandolier. Blake looks over to her, back down the table, sighs, and says, "You?" Yang smiles and drops her shotgun down. The original stock has been replaced with a Mil-Spec M4 stock, a picatinny rail lines the top of the weapon, and a shell holder directly in front of the receiver. The built in foregrip has been cut off and replaced with a second picatinny rail, which already holds a laser sight and tactical light.

"I've always wanted to use one of these, but the infantry never gets anything good," she says. "Now all I need to decide is which LMG to use. I'd take the PKM, but between a shotgun, LMG, and packs of extra ammo, plastic explosives, and body armor, I wouldn't make it very far without getting tired."

"Have you tried the Stoner?"

"Huh?"

"The Stoner LMG? I think it's one of the lightest machine guns. Back there." Black points to the corner of the armory."

"Sweet, thanks!" Yang says, and walks away.

Ruby, after practicing quickdraws with both her weapons, is satisfied with them. She glances over at Weiss, who is attaching an ACOG scope to a G36c. She watches the older woman professionally check every angle of the rifle, even going as far as taking the handguard assembly off to closer inspect the barrel.

"_How the hell am I the team leader and not her?" _Ruby silently asks herself. Weiss glances in her direction, and Ruby whips back around to the sniper rifles before they could fully make eye contact, but shakes her head to herself. "_Come on, Ruby, what are you doing? You're the team leader! Well, you're not a very good one, and you haven't exactly 'led' anything, but you should still make the most of it." _Ruby takes a deep breath, turns back around, and walks up to Weiss.

"Hey, Weiss…" Ruby says hesitantly. Weiss turns to her angrily.

"Oh, am I not moving fast enough, _team leader?_" she retorts. She says it loud enough for Blake and Yang to turn around.

"Uh, no," Ruby says, taken aback. "I mean, uh, you're not moving too slow, so I guess yes you are, which is good-"

"Well it's a good thing that you're only supposed to act as team leader while on deployment so I don't have to care. That is, if you last that long." Weiss turns her back to Ruby and fiddles with her rifle some more. Ruby's brows furrow.

"I didn't ask to be team leader, you know," she says. Weiss turns back around.

"If so, you didn't put up much of a fight in the barracks."

"Well if you're the perfect leader, then why didn't you?"

"Ah, passing on the blame. Another trait of a substandard soldier." Ruby clenches her fists, but doesn't move. Weiss notices and crosses her arms, alert.

"I bet you everything in this world that I've seen more shit than you ever did when you were my rank, you rear echelon _pogue_."

"Officer on deck!" Blake shouts, and stands at attention, along with Yang. Weiss and Ruby look towards the entrance of the armory, sees an officer with the insignia of a colonel attached to his shoulder, and do likewise. Weiss tries to maintain eye contact with Ruby, but she looks in the opposite direction.

"Fall in, Hunters!" the Colonel orders, and the soldiers comply, lining up in front of him. The Colonel is wearing an Army Combat Shirt (ACS), heavy Vale Commando Combat Trousers (VCCT), and standard combat boots. He has a large, gray mustache, puffy eyebrows, and long grey hair that poke out beneath his Ops-Core helmet.

"I am your commanding officer, Colonel Port," the Colonel announces. He paces back and forth as he speaks, hands clasped behind him. "You can run around the border countryside playing superheroes all you want, but as long as your boots are on this military establishment, you will assume that I am God. I fought in the First Human-Faunus War, led hundreds of soldiers into battle, and am the only human in history to fight ten Feds at once and take them as prisoner, so I do _not _recommend getting on my bad side. Understood?"

"Sir, yes Sir!" the girls say in unison.

"Very good! Grab your gear, stow them in your barracks, and get your AURA on. We're starting PT in thirty mikes, dismissed!" The soldiers salute and run out the door.

* * *

><p><strong>Fort Beacon, RWBY Squad Barracks<strong>

**10:31 hours**

"So, does anyone else know how to wear the AURA?" Blake asks as RWBY Squad stow their selected weaponry in empty cases, except for Crescent Rose, which Ruby keeps under her bunk, and Gambol Shroud, which is kept under Blake's pillow. Ruby looks at the large lockers against the wall. Now that she's closer, she can tell that they were specially built for the AURA suits, made completely out of stainless steel and no markings anywhere in sight.

"You kidding? I don't even know what they look like," Yang says. All their papers told them about AURA is the acronym and its basic functions.

"Ozpin must really not want anyone outside the Hunter Program to see them," Weiss says. "Not even my father heard anything about this."

"Well, it can't be that hard," Ruby says, and approaches the locker with the red square. She notices a small square button on the left of the front, and slowly touches it with her index finger. It doesn't move, and she tries pressing harder. A green button flashes on, and locks holding the door in place loudly unbolt, making Ruby jump back.

"VAF spares no expense," Blake mutters. Yang helps Ruby pull the massive steel door open, and the squad get their first look at an AURA suit.

It's a lot smaller than they imagined, judging by the size of the locker. The specially designed spaced and reactive armor isn't just one piece, of a series of packs of armor, held together by bolts, not unlike reactive tank armor. They are built in different shapes and sizes, depending on their location of the suit, in order to increase mobility and decrease weight for the user. A basic metal exoskeleton connects all the pieces of armor together, making it form a humanoid shape. Wires can be seen running inside the metal frame to all parts of the suit. The back of the torso is simply a sheet of metal, which carries the large, five pound battery that will keep the suit along. The torso is sewn onto a standard issue military jacket for ease of use. Metal straps are attached to the legs. This particular suit is outlined with red stripes. A Heavy Hunter Headgear (H3) helmet, an upgraded Ops-Core helmet with thicker armor plating, built-in flash lights on either side, and ear protection/headset, and a pair of ICARUS combat gloves sit on the ground of the locker.

"Wow," Yang says with a smile. "Now _that _is body armor." Blake tries pressing the fingerprint sensor on the locker with the white square, and the light turns red.

"They're for each individual user," she says, and opens the black locker. Yang and Weiss open the yellow and white lockers respectively.

"Do we just step in?" Weiss asks.

"Guess so," Yang says. They take off their body armor and stow it in crates. Each girl steps into their cramped locker, turning around as they slide their arms into the jacket before strapping their legs into place. As they do so, they can easily feel the weight of the metal frame and body armor of the suit. It's already about the weight of their old uniform plus full backpacks.

"Not exactly any improvement on the weight," Ruby says, stepping out of the locker. She practically has to drag her feet in order to walk; the metal frame around her legs is thicker than the rest of the exoskeleton.

"Hold on, Ruby," Blake says, also stepping out. "There's a switch on your battery pack."

"Well, flip it," Ruby says. Blake does so, and the battery comes to life. Ruby can feel the electrical waves spread throughout the suit, and as they do so, the extra weight is lifted. "Woah, it's light," Ruby exclaims. "Turn around." Blake turns, and Ruby flips her switch.

"The suits must be powered as well," Yang says, who steps out along with Weiss. They flip each other's switches on.

"Hopefully they won't seep energy out of the suit when it starts taking damage," Weiss says.

"Hey, all our suits are different," Ruby says, looking at her squad's AURA. She has the buffed legs; Weiss has small shoulder-mounted boxes on either shoulder, each with a casemate-mounted barrel; Blake's suit is lined with a second line of thicker wire on the outside of the suit; Yang has larger body armor and metal frame, and battery is nearly twice the size as the other suits'.

"Well, we are divided into classes," Yang says. "I guess all our suits help fit those classes."

"Correct," Port says at the entrance of the barracks, who quickly adds, "Don't bother standing at attention unless I say so from now on, it annoys me to say 'at ease' all the time. Besides, you're not grunts anymore, you're Hunters."

"Yes, Sir," the girls say to him.

"The engineers have been fiddling with the AURA design, and have been able to make modifications to the suit to better fill the needs of each class. Ruby, your sniper suit has heightened leg strength, allowing you to run faster and longer than any other Hunter class. Weiss, your assault suit has a shoulder-mounted GLYPH Personal Defense System, an experimental device. It will automatically target and fire small ball bearings at incoming RPGs and similar armaments with extreme accuracy. Blake, your stealth suit uses prototype light bending technology that is capable of bending the visible spectrum of your body to match the surrounding light, rendering you nearly invisible. Yang, your demolition suit is capable of converting absorbed bullets and fragments into extra power, making your suit stronger the more damage it takes, with the penalty of extra weight."

"Not a problem, Sir," Yang says.

"Wouldn't matter to me if it was," Port says. "Now get out here, your training as a Hunter begins now."


	9. Chapter 9: Kill House

**Fort Beacon, Close Quarters Kill House**

**5:54 hours**

**Day 3 of Hunter training for RWBY Squad**

RWBY squad lines up at the locked entrance of the kill house; Ruby in front, then Yang, Blake, and Weiss. Ruby throws up a hand signal, and Blake and Weiss move over to the other side of the door. Ruby checks one last time to make sure everyone is in position, steps in front of the door, and kicks it, her AURA's heavy hydraulic legs blowing it straight off the hinges and into the wall across from it. She steps back to let Yang and Blake to storm the first room, taking out the three paper silhouettes with ease. Ruby enters the house, with Weiss bringing up the rear.

Inside the kill house, there is a door directly to their left, a hallway to the right going straight ahead, which has three doors going down it, and another door directly to their right, next to the hallway. Blake and Yang move towards the hallway, weapons raised, almost bumping into Ruby, who hesitates when she steps inside.

"Come on, don't bunch up," Weiss says. Yang fires her shotgun down the hallway twice, filling another paper target with 18 lead balls of buckshot, and moves down it while Blake breaches the door to the right.

"On me," Ruby orders Weiss, who grunts and follows Ruby to the door on the left.

She puts her back to the right side of the door, with Weiss standing directly in front of the door, and kicks it backwards, decrease the amount of force applied, in case there are "hostages" on the other side. Nonetheless, the door is blown wide open, and Weiss storms in, rifle raised. She automatically lines up her sights with one target, and puts three rounds into it, two in the head and one in the neck/upper chest before sidestepping to the right, making room for Ruby to join her, who unloads half of her pistol magazine into a second target. Suddenly, a third paper target, this one with a bad guy holding a civilian in front of him, pops up from behind a wooden barricade directly in front of Weiss. The white haired girl takes aim, making sure not to let the bullet fly anywhere near the hostage, and pulls the trigger. A nanosecond later, Ruby also fires, both bullets passing through the bad guy's forehead. Weiss turns to Ruby angrily.

"What the hell was that!?" she asks.

"Huh?" Ruby replies, confused. A buzzer sounds, marking the end of the simulation.

"That was my target!" Weiss says, almost yells, as Yang and Blake join them in the room.

"What happened?" Yang asks, reloading her shotgun. "Why did the test end early?"

"Ruby didn't fully clear the room and took my kill!" Weiss says.

"It _was _clear," Ruby defends. "I just wanted to make sure the target was hit."

"If I'm aiming it, then trust me, it'll be hit.

"It wasn't clear," Port says, entering the room.

"What do you mean?" Ruby asks, looking around the room. "Three bad guys, all dead."

"Four," Blake says, staring at the breached door. She pulls it open, and reveals an untouched silhouette hiding behind it. A block of wood on the floor kept the door from swinging all the way open to simulate where the body of the faunus would be. "Textbook Fed tactic, hide a guard next to the hinges of a door to ambush attackers." Ruby's shoulders sink.

"Alright, take five, squad," Port says, pointing his thumb over his shoulder. "I'm gonna rearrange the targets in a harder pattern. Maybe I'm just being too easy on you." The squad walks back outside the kill house, Weiss' criticism in Ruby's ear the whole way.

"What's wrong with you?" Weiss asks her. "You should've learned basic breaching tactics in Advance Infantry Training. This should be a cakewalk!"

"I'm a scout sniper," Ruby says, taking off her pistol and sitting down at a bench. "I didn't go through the kill house in AIT."

"Doesn't matter. Maybe if you remembered that you're not the only one in there and tried relying on your teammates, we wouldn't be on our sixth attempt at this."

"Speak for yourself," Ruby mumbles, standing up and walking over to a table with an ammo crate. Weiss huffs and sits in her place. Blake stands near her, hands still on her MP7.

"She doesn't even know how to organize a squad correctly," Weiss mutters to her, cleaning her Myrtenaster with a rag. "She brings in the shotgun first and sends it down the hallway alone, then lets you clear a room by yourself, then messes up her own room clearing." Blake doesn't say anything at first.

"Considering that her only experience with team leading is from a pile of textbooks she's read in the past three days," she finally says. "She's doing rather well as a team leader. I've seen officers pull worse tactics than that."

"Yeah, in the infantry maybe," Weiss scoffs. "We're Hunters, we need combat tested leaders that actually know what they're doing right now." Yang joins Ruby, who stopped refilling her magazine long ago, listening to every word.

"I personally enjoy doing this six times," she says, holding up her shotgun, smiling proudly. A piece of scotch tape with the word "Ember" written on it is attached to the stock. A similar piece of tape on her LMG as the word "Celica" written on it. "It means I get to use this beauty piece of art six times as long!" Ruby thinks for a moment, staring at the table, then turns around.

"No, you're right," she says. Weiss looks up, quizzical. "Weiss, what changes to formation do you suggest?" Weiss stares at Ruby for a minute, then says,

"Door breach, then Me, Yang, Blake and you enter in that order. Blake cloaks and clears the hallway, Yang clears the left room with a grenade, then Blake clears the left hallway room and decloaks. Meanwhile, you and I clear the right room, then we regroup and clear the final two rooms."

"Everyone got that?" Ruby asks.

"Roger," Blake says.

"Got it," Yang says. Port walks outside the kill house entrance and puts a new lock on the door.

"Targets are set up," he says, walking toward them. "Or have you decided that paper is too much of a challenge?"

"Form up, squad," Ruby says, slapping a new mag into her PLR.

"That's what I thought," Port says as RWBY squad walks passed him.

They line up at the door in the same order as before.

"Remember to cloak only when you're inside, Blake," Ruby says. "Your battery will only drain so much energy to fuel your cloaking system before automatically powering off."

"Roger," Blake says. Ruby takes a deep breath.

"_This is the one."_

She gives a different hand signal, and Weiss and Yang move to the other side of the door. Ruby kicks the door in, and it flies back. She stands back and readies her weapon as her squad funnels inside, smoothly taking out four targets.

"Keep the pace up," Blake reminds, flips a switch on her wrist, and her body gradually disappears as the light hitting her is modified by her suit. Her vaguely visible silhouette walks down the hallway, and she open fires on two targets, taking a few extra steps forward before firing, since it takes the brain an average of two to three seconds to notice the outline.

Yang is right behind her as she moves, then breaks off when she reaches her door. She raises her shotgun to her hip, blows a hole through the thin wood, takes out a flashbang, pulls the pin, and drops it through to the other side.

"Hallway clear!" Blake shouts.

Ruby gives a hand signal to Weiss, raises her pistol, and kicks her door in and moves straight in, shooting a target and moving to the side. Weiss joins her as Yang's grenade goes off. Yang storms in and unloads several shells into multiple targets, taking one out from a table before it could pop out.

"Clear," Ruby says, surveying the room. Weiss does the same, and repeats the word.

"Two coming out," Weiss shouts outside. The sound of Blake's suppressed MP7 rounds are heard from the end of the hallway.

"Form up!" Ruby orders as she and Weiss quickly walk down the hallway, Yang directly ahead of them. Blake is walking out of her room, her suit decloaking and her physical body returning to the correct spectrum.

Yang and Blake take the door at the end of the hallway, and Ruby and Weiss take the door across from Blake's room. Weiss and Yang each kick their doors in, and Ruby and Blake move into the rooms.

Ruby immediately pops a target in the back left corner, Weiss moves in, a hostage target pops up, she shoots the bad guy. Ruby notices the door is still ajar, and she whips it open. She puts three rounds into the target behind it, point blank.

"Clear."

Blake moves into the right side of the room, which is significantly longer than the other rooms, about the length of the hallway outside. She shoots two targets. Yang enters the room and turns two targets to confetti. Five more targets from varying lengths of the room pop up. Blake empties her MP7 into three of the targets, drops it and unholsters and aims Gambol Shroud in one swift motion, and shoots the remaining two targets in between where the eyes would be.

"Clear."

A buzzer sounds.

"About damn time, squad," Port says, entering the kill house from a side door in Ruby and Weiss' room. "I thought it would take you all damn night to get it right." Yang and Blake join them. Yang holds up her fist, and Blake bumps it.

"That was great shooting back there," Yang says. Blake shrugs.

"I've done it in the field before," she replies.

"Enough celebrating, get out there," Port says. "I gotta get these targets reset?"

"Reset?" Ruby repeats. "But, didn't we complete it?"

"Yeah, once. You're gonna do this course as many times as it takes for you to move like clockwork."

"Yes, Sir," the girls say, and walk back outside, this time more invigorated.

"Thanks for the help, Weiss," Ruby says with a smile.

"Uh, no problem," she says. "I'm gonna grab a few extra mags." She walks to the ammo table.

"Why'd you let her?" Yang asks Ruby, reloading Ember.

"Let her what?" Ruby asks.

"Let her call the shots?" Yang clarifies. "Isn't that exactly what she wants? To be team leader?"

"No, she doesn't want that," Ruby says. "She just wants this squad to succeed, and she thinks that being team leader is the only way to do it."

"Really? 'Cause that's not the vibe I got."

"Same," Blake says, who stands nearby, filling her MP7 mag with more bullets. "Especially for a poster girl for Schnee Armaments."

"Wait, poster girl?" Yang asks. Blake looks up.

"You didn't figure it out?" Blake asks. Yang shakes her head, and Blake smirks. "She's the CEO of Schnee's kid. Her whole point of being here is a PR stunt." Ruby frowns.

"I don't buy it," she says.

"Why not? She obviously wants team leader. Team leader of a Hunter squad means good news for Schnee." Ruby looks at the white haired girl. She's out of hearing distance, but she's fiddling with a magazine, reloading it slowly and with sluggish movements, clearly deep in thought.

"I just don't buy it,' Ruby simply says.

A few minutes later, Port walks out of the kill house and tells them they're up. RWBY Squad stacks up at the door again.


	10. Chapter 10: Take The Shot

**Black Dawn Forest, 40 miles SW of Fort Beacon**

**15:34**

**Day 12 of Hunter training for RWBY Squad**

Ruby and Weiss walk through the endless trees, Ruby carrying her folded Crescent Rose and Weiss carrying a map, occasionally glancing at the handheld GPS device strapped to her wrist.

"Alright, I figured it out," Weiss says for the thirty-something time. "The map is outdated, so I thought we were in a different grid box. We just need to walk another five hundred feet this direction, then turn north, and the target should be straight ahead."

"Are you sure this time?" Ruby mutters when she sees the same tree for the fifth time.

"Of course! Counter Wind had far more complicated road and walking routes, and I handled that no problem. This is a cakewalk."

They walk for another two hundred feet.

"Wait, this doesn't look right," Weiss says, holding the map closer to her face. Ruby rolls her eyes. "We're in E24, right?"

"Sure," Ruby says. She's never touched the map before.

"Well, if we're going on where E24 was when this map was made, then we'll have to move south by southeast starting about fifty feet to our left, then move around a heavy cluster of trees, then turn north. If we're going by where E24 _should_ be, then we move north by northeast for a few hundred feet, pass a formation of boulders on the side of a cliff, and the target should be in a clearing just north of that."

"You have no idea where we are," Ruby says. Weiss turns to face her.

"What!? Of course I know where we are! This map is just old!"

"Whatever you say, lead the way," Ruby mumbles. Weiss continues walking forward, abruptly stops, turns right, and continues forward.

"Alright, that's it," she says after another ten minutes of random course changes and Ruby looking for more familiar landmarks. "We must have passed it by now. It's this dumb map, it's-"

"Enough with the map!" Ruby blurts out. "Just admit it, we're lost. _You're _lost."

"I am _not_ lost!"

"Oh, we're not? Then explain how we've been at this for five hours and still only two miles from where we started?" Ruby asks, holding up her own GPS device. Weiss looks at her own for a minute.

"This map is shit," Weiss says, holding the paper up. Ruby takes it and looks at it.

"Which way were you holding it?" Ruby asks. It's a local Faunus-made map, there's no compass and an unreliable legend, with little color variation for the terrain and whatnot.

"Uh, what?"

"You're half right. It's a bad map, but not outdated."

"Alright, how about you lead, _team leader?_"

"I will." Ruby starts looking closer at the map, comparing it with her GPS.

"Oh please," Weiss scoffs. "I led an infantry company halfway across Counter Wind no problem, how's a rookie supposed to know any more than which way is up?" Ruby crumples up the map in anger.

"Fuck you and your Counter Wind bullshit," she says through gritted teeth. "I've been in combat before."

"Oh yeah, grunt? Where?"

"In the-" Ruby's mind freezes when she remembers Penny's face, the mess hall exploding, get getting tossed to the ground as everything she thought she knew about war changed. She can still feel the heat of the massive flames through her AURA.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Weiss says, turning around and walking away. Ruby throws the map on the ground, walks up to a tree, crouches down, and springs twenty feet into the air, leaving two small craters where her feet left the ground. Weiss turns around, startled. "The hell are you doing?"

"Reconnaissance," Ruby answers, and springs once more, snapping the large branch off like a twig. She pulls the receiver of her rifle forward and looks through the scope. "There's a large grove of redwoods in this direction, maybe a mile or two out. Looks like where our target is supposed to be. Guess you didn't lead us that far off course."

"I didn't lead us anywhere off course, it was the ma-" Weiss is interrupted by Ruby dropping to the ground from over 40 feet in the air, her advanced leggings absorbing the fall, creating a shockwave that makes Weiss stagger back.

"We can go straight to it, this way," Ruby says, folding and putting Crescent Rose back in its sling. Weiss hesitates for a moment, and then follows.

Half an hour later, after continuous hiking through the woods in utter silence, Ruby holds up her fist.

"What? We're not anywhere near the target yet," Weiss says.

"Ozpin said that there are motion sensors set up around the target," Ruby says, scanning the area. They are a few dozen trees away from the edge of the clearing. "We can take the shot from here."

"W."hat do you mean 'take the shot'?" Weiss asks. "We'd have to be at practically the top to see over the tree line

"And?" Ruby asks, looking up at a tree. She springs up halfway and climbs the rest of the way, afraid that this tree isn't strong enough to survive her leggings.

She reaches the highest branch that she's confident will hold her weight, and unslings and unfolds Crescent Rose in one swift motion. Using one hand to hold onto the trunk of the tree and balancing the barrel of the rifle on a nearby branch, she peers through the scope at the gove. Sure enough, in between the first row of redwoods, a white mannequin dressed up in old BDUs stands out in the open, held up by wires attaching it to the trees.

"I got it in sights, climb up," Ruby says, dropping Crescent Rose and letting her dangle from the sling. She unravels a line of rappelling rope, drops it down to Weiss, loops it around the trunk, and holds onto her end. Weiss grabs the rope and slowly aligns positions one leg, then the other on the trunk, testing the strength. Ruby keeps her grip solid, and Weiss starts climbing up.

"Isn't it usually my job to remind everyone about little details like motion sensors?" Weiss asks as she climbs. "Since when were you this careful about, well, anything?"

"I'm a scout sniper, Weiss," Ruby replies. "If you think you know anything about sharpshooting, collecting intelligence, terrain navigation, and speed that I don't know about, you're mistaken." Weiss snorts.

"As if you've ever been able to use those skills in the line of duty," Weiss says. Ruby has half a mind to let go of the rope for a second or two, if not for anything but her own satisfaction. Although, technically it is true; Ruby hasn't shot anyone yet, only save her entire base.

Weiss grabs onto a branch next to Ruby's, and Ruby pulls with all her might on the rope, hoisting her up onto it.

"I can't believe we're actually doing this," Weiss says, looking at the ground, which seems miniscule from this height. She closes her eyes and looks away.

"Beautiful view, though," Ruby says. Their tree is a few feet taller than the majority of the trees in the forest, and they have a great view of the vast woodland of Viktor Speeder, the snowy mountains of Oak Whiskey to the west, and the far off plains of Counter Wind to the east. The only thing ruining the scenery is the rising black smoke of far off battlefields on the other side of Viktor Speeder, where HKC and UFF troops fight endlessly.

"_I'm gonna be in that soon," _both girls think silently to themselves.

"Alright, let's get this over with," Weiss speaks up after a moment of silence. "Where's the target?" Ruby braces Crescent Rose against her shoulder and aims towards the grove. She is in a sitting position on one branch, has the rifle resting on another smaller branch in front of her acting as a bipod, and her extra hand keeping the sling taught to minimize sway.

"I need an exact range when the tree sways all the way to the right," Ruby says. They're so high up, they're constantly on the move, the wind rocking them back and forth. Ruby begins to think that maybe they should've braved the sensors.

"You seriously think you can make this shot?" Weiss asks. "This is stupid, let's just take it from the ground."

"Nope, everything is flat on the ground and the grove is in a valley, we'll be detected long before we have a shot on it." Weiss sighs and raises her spotting scope.

"Range: Niner, one, four." Ruby adjusts the knob on her scope, lining the shot up when the tree sways to the right. "Wind: From four o'clock to eleven. Four miles per hour." Ruby waits for the tree to sway again, then quickly adjusts her crosshair." Elevation: point eight mils down." Ruby compensates for the elevation. She tightens her grip on the sling, not wanting the rifle to move a centimeter off course.

"On target," she says.

"Send it when ready," Weiss says, and looks away from the scope and at Ruby, watching the intensity in her partially concealed face behind the scope. Ruby holds her breath as the tree sways to the left. She gently rests her finger on the trigger, and the tree begins to sway to the right.

More pressure on the trigger.

The x-axis of the crosshair begins to line up with the mannequin, and the tree starts to slow its swaying again.

Ruby starts to breath out.

The y-axis lines up perfectly.

**BANG!**

Crescent Rose sends its payload, and Weiss darts back to the range finder. A second later, the upper chest of the mannequin explodes, sending white dust and fragments in all directions.

"Hit," Weiss says. Ruby lets out a sigh of relief, and folds Crescent Rose back up.

"See?" Ruby says, smiling at her squadmate. "Piece of cake."

"Holy shit, Ruby," Weiss says, mouth agape. "That was perfect, and the tree was...Holy shit."

"Told you I could shoot," Ruby replies. She looks down at the ground, then at Weiss. "Want a ride down?"

* * *

><p><strong>Blake Dawn Forest, 75 miles SW of Fort Beacon<strong>

**16:56**

**Day 12 of Hunter training for RWBY Squad**

Blake and Yang move carefully through the forest, the opposite side of where Ruby and Weiss are. This side is more dense, each tree and average of mere feet from each other, with lots of low hanging branches. Despite the overbearing weight of her AURA, Ember and Celia, Yang is able to move through the terrain with little problem. Blake, on the other hand, moves better than no problem; she flows with the terrain, never hitting a branch, stepping on a twig, or making any noise whatsoever.

"The Airborne trained you well," Yang says. Blake simply nods.

A few meters later, she stops suddenly next to a tree and looks at it. She unsheathes her knife and digs it into the bark, scrounging around inside the wood. After some prodding, she takes it back out, with a small motion sensor embedded in the blade.

"Seriously, how are you finding those?" Yang asks. "That's like the eighth one so far, and I don't think you missed any."

"They smell funny," Blake replies without thinking. She freezes in place when she realizes what she said.

"Smell?" Yang repeats, sniffing the air. Fortunately, she's not too knowledgeable of the Faunus to know that they have an extremely heightened sense of smell, and are capable of detecting the smell of virtually anything. Blake thinks quickly.

"It's a joke in the Airborne," she says. "Because we're so good at tracking that it's like we rely on the scent of the enemy."

"Really?" Yang asks. "I've got a good buddy in the Airborne, and I never heard of that one."

"It's just from my unit."

"Which unit? My buddy-"

"Drop it, Yang." They stop moving and stare at eachother for a second. Blake's heart is beating out of her chest.

"Alright, sorry for prying," Yang says.

"Let's move," Blake says, and continues moving forward. Another ten feet, and she finds another sensor in a tree; they're getting more concentrated as they move.

"I was raised near a forest just like this one on Patch," Yang says as Blake pockets the sensor.

"Patch?" Blake asks.

"A little island off of the west coast of Vale. Fishing and lumber community of a little less than five thousand. Nice and quiet, great place to raise a family."

"Big family?" Blake asks. Normally she'd just stay quiet, but she thinks she oews Yang for snapping at her; if they're gonna work together, she shouldn't get on her bad side.

"Not really," Yang replies. "Just me, my dad, and my little sister, Lara. I never knew my mother. From what I've gathered, she left when Lara was born. I don't think it was on very good terms, because my dad got really distant. Like he wans't really...uh…"

"There?" Blake finishes.

"Yeah, I guess. He kind of gave up on being a dad and kind of just lived it us, like we were roommates. On the bright side, it made me independant at an early age."

"Not a very bright side," Blake says, remembering her own childhood.

"Maybe not for me, but definitely for Lara. She's a lot less tame than me. She probably wouldn't have made it very long on her own. Hell, I practically had to tie her down to keep her from coming with me to the VAF recruiting center."

"So why'd you join?"

"I needed to get out of there, off of Patch. I always wanted to go to exciting places, and I guess the military came up as the cheapest route, with all the rising Faunus tensions and all. I'm trying to raise enough money to move Lara and my dad to the mainland. I don't like Patch's vulnerability."

"Don't worry, if they're on the west coast, then they're sure to be behind the Human fleet's positions. If anything somehow punches through that, they'll have plenty of time to evacuate."

"Yeah, maybe, but better safe than-hold up," Yang says, raising her fist. "See it? Dead ahead?"

"Roger," Blake says. A few hundred feet ahead, through the dense spotting the mannequin propped against a bush, covered in leaves and branches. "It must be completely surrounded by motion sensors."

"Think you can get close enough to take it out in one shot?" Yang asks. Blake surveys the area. She can't smell any sensors in the immediate area.

"Yeah, it should be safe for the both of us for another hundred feet or so," Blake says. The pair continue their trek through the forest, but with greater care in each step.

"So, where did you grow up, Blake?" Yang asks.

"A little border country called New Tango. Near the Federation Peninsula."

"Oh, how was that?" Yang asks. Blake remembers the human-faunus relation faunus, the anti-faunus and anti-human protests and riots, the abusive pro-Fed militia, the looting, the everyday fight for the next meal, her friends dying, martial law when the White Fang moved into her neighborhood, which turned out to be her great escape.

"Not good," she answers simply.

"I can imagine," Yang says. "Any family?"

"No, never knew of any family. I mostly grew up with other kids my…" Blake trails off, standing still.

"Your what?" Yang asks.

"Walk back a few feet, but step in your footprints," Blake orders urgently. She looks down at her foot.

"What is it?" Yang asks worriedly, taking a few steps back.

"I think I stepped on a landmine," Blake answers. She can feel the weight pushing on her right foot.

"Shit, they really didn't want us to pass this exercise," Yang says. "Think it's real?"

"They used real mines in the Airborne training, and this sure as hell feels real."

"Alright, so I guess this complicates things a bit. I'll go find a rock to put underneath it."

"Not a good idea. If they used a Fed mine, then it'll activate from any form of pressure change, not complete pressure release like human mines."

"Ok, so...you're stuck?"

"I guess."

"Oh." Yang looks around awkwardly. "Now what?"

"My MP7 is barely inside effective range of the target," Blake says, sniffing the air around her. She smells the lingering scent of the sensors, but also something new that she missed before. Kind of like the metal of the motion sensors but also something similar to the smell of grenades. "And there's probably more mines around. Think Celia can reach it from here?"

"Yeah, but I doubt it'll strike it on the first shot." Yang thinks for a moment. "Hold on, I have an idea." She takes out Ember, opens the revolving cylinder, takes out one of the buckshot shells and replaces it with the slug. "Can you crouch down? I'll have to go over your head?"

"What exactly are you doing?" Blake asks, getting on one knee. Yang scoots to her left, aligning herself with the mannequin.

"Long range shotgun shooting," Yang answers. "Hey, can you toss me your scope?" Blake slides the scope off her MP7, slowly rotates her body while keeping her foot on the mine, and throws it to Yang, who slides it on her picatinny rail.

"Have you ever tried that before?" Blake asks. Yang takes aim at the mannequin.

"Absolutely not," Yang replies. She slows her breathing, slowly presses down on the trigger, and fires.

Blake both feels and hears the giant piece of lead zip over her head, in between the trees, and into the face of the mannequin, which explodes into millions of pieces and releasing a fine, white mist.

"I'll be damned," Blake says. "Nice shot."

"Thanks," Yang says. "Now then, about your mine... You think someone will come to disarm it after a while?"

"Can't disarm Fed mines. Once they're armed they're armed."

"How do you know so much about Faunus equipment?" Yang asks.

"New Tango had mines everywhere from the First War," Blake answers. She didn't even have to lie about that one. "You learn a thing or two from hearing cattle and dumbasses wandering into unmarked fields every once in a while."

"Wow," Yang says simply, then gets an idea. "Alright, I know what to do," she tells Blake, and drops Ember and Celia.

"Diving off of it won't work, if that's what you're thinking."

"Course not. I'm gonna dive on top of it."

"You what!?"

"My AURA is supposed to absorb damage, right?" Yang asks, beating her heavily armored chest. "So, I shouldn't be hurt from just one landmine."

"Are you insane?"

"A little," Yang says with a smile. She takes a few steps back. "If I dive, can you move out of the way right before I land?"

"Yes, but-"

"Perfect. Good luck," Yang says, and starts running towards Blake.

_"As if I'm the one that needs luck,"_ Blake thinks silently.

When Yang gets five feet from Blake, she jumps up with all her might, arms spread forward. A fraction of a second before she slides to the ground, Blake springs up with her left foot, her right foot leaving the ground. She can instantly hear the click of the mine being activated. She lands on her back a meter away from Yang, who drops straight onto the exploding mine, muffling the sound of the explosion. Both girls lay where they are as the surge of adrenaline quickly dies down.

"Yang?" Blake calls out. The blonde doesn't move. "Yang!?" Blake shouts, standing up and walking over.

Yang lifts her head, laughing.

"I can't believe that worked!" she says. Blake shakes her head.

"You seriously have a death wish," she says. She extends her hand, which Yang takes.

"Easy to have one with this suit," she says as Blake helps her up. "Wow, I feel front heavy now." Blake taps her chest.

"It's a lot denser than what our armor usually is," she notes. "It must've soaked up everything that came out of the mine."

"Yep, looks like it," Yang says, pointing to where the mine used to be. All that remains is a dark black scorch mark and a small hole where it was laid. She walks over to her weapons and slings them around her shoulders. "Well, that was fun. Hey, you think I can go head to head with a tank shell?"

"I highly recommend not getting any crazy ideas," Blake suggests. Yang smirks.


	11. Chapter 11: Friendly Fire

**Hunter Breach, Oil Well 6**

**00:21 hours**

Roman's humvee rolls up next to the small building next to the entrance of a liquid dust well, a few hundred feet from the flaming pumpjack. Wreckage of human and Faunus military vehicles and corpses litter from a recent battle over the well, the surrounding landscape, eerie shadows shakily being cast by the mountainous flames in the distance.

A group of Paladins, two of them completely destroyed by rocket fire and the other three with half their wheels missing and littered with anti-tank bullet holes, are parked on the road outside of the half-destroyed chain link fence surrounding the pumpjack. Most of their occupants lie a few dozen feet into the compound, where they successfully held off five Beowolfs, the Federation's APC, its turret equipped with two 30mm autocannons and a 5.56 LMG mounted in between. The Beowulf's wounds were inflicted mostly by AT4 rocket launchers, quickly disabling them, but not before all of the Atlesians were wiped out. The few remaining Feds must have retreated by foot, but no reinforcements from either side have arrived so far.

Roman opens the humvee door and steps out. He can feel the intense heat of liquid dust burning, even from this distance. The shack is surprisingly unscathed; the windows are blown out, the furniture inside thrown about the room, bullet holes everywhere; but it's still standing.

Inside, four White Fang soldiers dig out random files from the overturned filing cabinets and feeding the papers through shredders. Four other individuals also stand in the room, all of them donning AURA; Neo, Roman's sixteen-year-old second in command, who was an orphaned street rat in the ghettos of Atlas when he found her. She has had a...peculiar past with humans, leaving her mouth in the form of a permanent smile. She carries an L85A2 and wears white and pink assault AURA. Mercury, a human mercenary that Roman hired in a job a few years ago, supervises the WF grunts. He is armed with an F2000 with dark grey sniper AURA. Cinder, the woman he talked with in Netvorville, stands in front of the door, waiting for him. She wears typical bitch pack Federation Commando gear, the same color as her stealth AURA. A muscular seven foot tall White Fang grunt, arms covered in traditional Faunus tattoos and wears a WF officer's mask painted red and bleach white demolition AURA, stands behind her. He carries a Pancor Jackhammer.

"Hell of a mess you made," Roman says, taking a look around the room. The stench of dry blood from four dead Faunus soldiers, which is plastered on the walls like a bad paint job, still lingers in the air.

"You're getting paid and the Coalition forces aren't advancing, why should you give a shit about the mess?" Cinder remarks, a frown replacing her usual cynical smile.

"My, my. What's up your bush today?" Roman asks with a smirk. Cinder flares at him.

"Neo," she commands simply. The small girl picks up a folder marked "CONFIDENTIAL" and tosses it to Roman.

"What am I looking at?" he asks.

"You can read, right?" Cinder asks. Roman rolls his eyes and opens the folder and reads the top paper.

A Faunus propped against an overturned desk, most likely shot defending the entrance when the Paladins rolled up, grunts weakly and attempts to raise his hand. Without bothering to turn his head, Roman pulls an HK P30 pistol from his coat pocket and shoots the Fed three times in the head.

"Alright, this is an inventory list for a Fed base near Netvorville," Roman says, thumbing through the other papers. "Why is it here?" Cinder walks next to him and snatches the file out of his hands.

"It was being carefully moved from the base to my superiors," she says. She selects a specific paper, listing a large range of weapons and equipments and their quantities, and holds it up to Roman's face. "What does the fifth line down say?"

"Uh, 'RCS x 10.' The fuck is RCS?"

"It's the shit the human Hunters are wearing now," Cinder says angrily. "They were prototypes that began stress testing three years ago. The Feds just informed me that they are no longer in possession of said shit."

"And...why do I care?" Cinder grabs Roman's coat collar and pulls him close.

"I gave you a blank check to wreak havoc and distract the humans while I get this war over with, now I find out that the suits mysteriously disappeared… while in a White Fang camp before being moved to a more secure location. Now the humans have our tech, and we have nothing." Roman slaps Cinder's hand away.

"You mean besides the shit you're wearing?"

"The Feds don't care about human tech. They wouldn't buy it even if they did know about it."

"Oh, so your plan with the Faunus is falling apart? I guess now you know what happens when one of your closest assets isn't included in your big master plan." Cinder glares at him. "Seriously, the fuck do you want me to do about it?"

"This Hunter threat needs to be dealt with. Vale is spearheading the project, headed by some piss poor idealist General, but we're getting reports of Minstrel Hunters and even some sightings from Vacuo Militia. There's not too many of them yet, but more and more are being trained, so we need to strike soon."

"And you want the White Fang to bomb a few civilian populations in Vale?" Roman guesses.

"Yes, but only after the Federation makes their big move."

"Oh, we're still working with the Feds?" Roman asks, eyeing the soldier he just shot.

"As far as they know," Cinder answers. "I've organized your people into a strike force. Keep all connections open for them, they'll be dealing with the more troublesome Hunters."

"Done."

"I hope so. For your sake." Emerald, another human Roman hired alongside Mercury, enters the building through the back door. She carries a Magpul PDR and wears mint-colored assault AURA.

"Cinder," she says, then quickly corrects herself. "I mean, uh, Agent Cinder. The radioman was alive, but he wasn't able to send any messages."  
>"So no one's left?" Cinder asks.<p>

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Good. Move out, people, we're torching the rest." Everyone in the room begins to funnel out, but Cinder stops Roman.

"Don't fuck up again," she hisses. Roman is uneasy at first, but then smiles.

"If I do, I'll shoot me myself," he says. Cinder rolls her eyes and walks out the door.

The soldiers pour into their own vehicles, Roman back into his humvee and Cinder's group into a Creeper, rotors already spinning up. Cinder unshoulders an M79 grenade launcher, loads an HE grenade and fires it at the remains of the shack, which explodes into a million pieces of timber, metal, and charred bodies. Their flames join the ones of the liquid dust as the chopper takes off.

* * *

><p><strong>Fort Beacon Firing Range<strong>

**04:44 hours**

**Day 18 of Hunter training for RWBY Squad**

Yang aims her LMG at Ruby, and opens fire, letting the bullets fly. They are immediately stopped by Ruby's AURA, which absorbs the shock of the lead and rebuilds the damaged armor plating. Yang unloads nearly half her magazine without letting off on the trigger, and Ruby barely has to react to the bullets coming within inches of her stomach.

"Yeah, these things definitely work," Ruby says, walking back to the firing line; Yang swaps out magazines, Weiss is polishing Myrtenaster's barrel, and Blake leans sits on a bench a few feet away, reading a local border country newspaper, the word "WAR" prominent on every page. "You're up, Yang."

"About damn time!" Yang says with glee, and jogs out to where Ruby was standing; bits of damaged AURA pieces and spent ammunition surround her. "Weiss, hit me with something different," Yang requests.

"Alright," Weiss replies, closing the barrel of the pistol and spinning the cylinder. "Tracer?"  
>"Negative, explosive."<p>

"Uh, I don't think the armor can take that kind of damage."

"Blake's armor absorbed Ruby's sniper rifle just fine, and I have twice as thick armor."

"She did survive jumping on a landmine," Blake says without looking up.

"This isn't ordinary HE rounds," Weiss says, popping the barrel open and taking out one of the vials of dust. "This is hand-smelted and crafted explosive dust, directly from Schnee Armaments' main factory. It's not just some imported mass produced crap; this is specifically designed with a blast radius larger than-"

"Just shoot me already!" Yang says, spreading her arms out. Weiss sighs, reinserts the vial, closes the barrel, and takes aim.

"If you die, I have two witnesses that will testify that I am doing this against my better judgement," Weiss says.

"Good for you, now shoot," Yang says. Weiss pulls the trigger, and the explosive-carrying bullet flies directly into Yang's chest. Surprisingly, the AURA completely swallows and dismantles it before it can activate, and Yang only reacts by flinching a little more than normal.

"Wow!" Ruby says. Weiss stares in disbelief. "Can you shoot me next?"

"Hand crafted, huh?" Blake retorts. Weiss scowls at her teammate, who still hasn't looked up.

"What else do you got?" Yang asks, padding down the armor where she was shot. She can feel the added weight underneath.

"Incendiary, armor piercing-"

"Armor piercing!" Yang shouts. Weiss rolls the cylinder to the correct position, and fires. The bullet, coated in a form of dust that instantly hardens when leaving the barrel, strikes Yang in the shoulder, knocking off a good chunk of armor, close to where she was shot in Hunter Breach. She cries out and falls to one knee, hand on her shoulder.

"Oh shit!" Ruby says, running down range. Yang quickly holds up the OK hand signal and slowly stands up.

"Oh my god!" Weiss says, hands shaking. Even Blake stands up.

"I'm good," Yang says to Ruby. She stretches her arm and moves it around. Weiss and Blake join them.

"Did it penetrate?" Blake asks, eyeing Yang's arm. Even with a large chunk of the original armor missing, the suit has been hard at working, the new armor plating visibly being moved into position by the electric current inside the armor.

"I'm good," Yang repeats. She holds up the jacket and looks underneath the armor "It's just near an old wound. I think the AP actually almost got through to the last layer of armor before being stopped."

"Well, I guess, uh, it's a good thing it didn't," Weiss says, nervously unloading Myrtenaster. "Are you sure you're ok?"  
>"Hell yeah," Yang says. "That was great. My shoulder feels about ten pounds heavier too."<p>

"Remind me to never get in front of that thing," Ruby says to Weiss. "Hey Blake, you wanna try getting shot by Crescent Rose while cloaked? I want to see if it'll flicker off on a bigger caliber." Blake doesn't respond. "Blake?" Ruby turns to her teammate, and sees that she's starring in the other direction, outside the range. The rest of the squad turns to look, and turn silent too.

A convoy of Paladins and white M939s, obviously from the AA, drive through the main entrance of the base. But they're not extra security; the transport trucks are full of wounded soldiers, their blue and white uniforms covered in red blood. Many bodies are piled on top of each other from lack of space, and many aren't moving. The ones that do move cry out in agony, yell for release from the pain, flail their arms and legs. Medics step around the fallen soldiers, stabbing them with autoinjectors of morphline, and hang IV bags from the support beams in the back. There are more soldiers on top of the Paladins, a few wounded and on stretchers as well, but most are unhurt physically, but mentally they already look dead; Ruby had always read about the thousand-yard stare, saw pictures of it from the First War, but something's so unsettling seeing it in purpose; seeing the best human soldiers on Remnant, with their uniforms torn, their masks and helmets resting limply on their laps, their eyes wide and staring into space. It brings her back to Camp Signal, when this whole war started.

"Shit," Yang says, forgetting the subsiding pain in her arm. "The Feds are putting up a fight."

"This is Viktor Speeder," Blake says. "The Federation lost control of this land in the First War. They're throwing everything they have at this place."

"Yeah, I always heard about how bad the fighting was, but...I guess I never really thought about this part of combat."

"Fucking animals," Weiss mutters as the last of the vehicles rolls by. "They don't even have any official rules of engagement, not even for non combatants."

"No reason to have rules for who to shoot when they're fighting in countries that are used to getting shot at," Blake says, remembering the skirmishes the militia forces in New Tango would get into when she was a kid. Sometimes it was with local rebels, sometimes foreign mercenaries, sometimes even Feds; just depended on who wanted to be pissed off at. She remembers the summer when she learned to trained her Faunus instincts to block out the gunfire during the night.

"No surprise," Weiss scoffs. "Still just a bunch of eugenic-crazed zealots trying to raise hell on the rest of the world. We shouldn't have stopped at the borders during the First War." Blake looks at Weiss.

"You know, some of the most decorated units in the Coalition forces during the First War were all Faunus," she says. "Their advanced capabilities were extremely valuable in fighting the Feds."

"Yeah right, they segregated them because they were 'valuable'," Weiss retorts. "They did it because they didn't want any of them spying on the humans."

"You got a problem with Faunus?" Blake asks, taking a step forward. Ruby and Yang look at each other worriedly.

"Not that it's any of your business," Weiss says, crossing her arms. "But yes, I got a problem with the animals. They're a bunch of radical mutants as far as I'm concerned. They can't be trusted, not after what they did to themselves and to humanity."

"None of them asked to be Faunus," Blake says, choosing her words carefully.

"You mean besides the religious zealots that modified their own and others' genes in illegal experiments hundreds of years ago?"

"So we should punish an entire race because of the decisions of a handful of people?" Weiss points at the distant Atlesian vehicles.

"That's what Faunus are capable of, not just a 'handful' of them. An entire army of the fuckers did that. They're all like that."

"So are humans!" Blake says, raising her voice.

"Uh, guys?" Ruby says quietly. "Can we please get back to shooting each other?"

"It's getting late, I'm done for the day," Blake says, walking out the firing range. Weiss shakes her head.

"Can you believe that?" Weiss says.

"Well, she did grow up in a border country," Yang says. "Most of the population in border countries are Faunus, she probably just sees them differently."

"Yeah, she never saw them with both eyes open," Weiss murmurs. Yang looks at Ruby, who shrugs.

"Just out of curiosity, Weiss," Yang says. "Approximately how many Faunus have you met personally?" Weiss is silent for a moment.

"Enough," she answers.

"Can you give me a number?" Weiss stares at the ground for a moment, then looks up, her white eyes as cold as ice.

"How many are in the inner circle of the White Fang in the Atlas Mob?" she answers. "You know what, I think I'm done for the day too." She walks out of the range, but goes in the opposite direction of Blake.

"Definitely didn't expect that," Yang says, wondering about the white haired girl.

"No kidding," Ruby says. "Do...do you know any Faunus?"

"Not really, but I don't hold anything against the species as a whole, just Feds. You?"

"No, I'm pretty much the same." The two girls stand silent for a moment, thinking about what their squadmates have gone through.

"So," Yang says, holding up her shotgun. "You think your armor can hold up from point blank range?"  
>"Now we're talking."<p> 


	12. Chapter 12: Back in the War

**Fort Beacon, RWBY Squad Barracks**

**23:36 hours**

**Day 22 of Hunter training for RWBY Squad**

Ruby sits on her bunk, twirling a pen in her hand deep in thought, with a pile of papers, sketches of seemingly random lines and dots, and books concerning military tactics. Blake stands next to the bunk, leaning against the wall, reading one of her books from home.

"Ok, so how about this," Ruby says, leaning forward and scribbling on a piece of paper in her lap. "What if for Bumblebee 4A, you and Yang take the left flank, Yang provides suppressive fire, you move in-"

"Negative, Yang would suppress me," Blake interrupts. He bends down, takes the pen from Ruby, and crosses out on of the lines and extending another. "Yang should protect my flank if I want to move in, although that sounds like 3C. I should move in uncloaked along with Yang in section 4 is for joint offensive tactics, right?" Ruby's grey eyes dart around the paper, then the pile of resources next to her, then to Blake.

"I have no fucking clue," Ruby says, throwing herself down on the bed. Blake drops the pen and stands back up.

"You're doing fine," she reassures flatly. "You're just trying to think like a follower instead of a leader. You gotta put yourself in the CO's boots."

"I'm trying," Ruby moans, staring at the ceiling. "It's just that...I'm really not cut out for team leader. I was only a private before the Hunter Program, how should I know flanks and suppressive fire?"

"You're a scout sniper, I seriously doubt you weren't taught the basics for what you were trained for. Just apply them to this."

"Yeah, I'm doing that," Ruby sighs, rubbing her eyes. She looks to Blake. "Do you think Ozpin made a mistake?"

"What?" Blake says, surprised. Ruby stands up.

"Me being team leader," Ruby says. "If this bio report about me is so detailed about my personality, emotional behavior, combat experience and all that, then why would I get picked out of everyone?" Blake has no idea what to say. "I mean, Weiss obviously has experience from the Counter Wind shit she's always talking about. Yang patrolled border towns since the start of the war. And you were in the Airborne...that's about all I know about you, actually, but I'm assuming you didn't get to Second Lieutenant for nothing."

"Right," Blake says slowly. "Well...I'm not questioning General Ozpin's decision. If he elected you as team leader, even if you weren't the obvious candidate, then I'm sure he has his reasons, and that's enough for me."

"Thanks," Ruby says with a smile, which Blake weakly returns. Ruby picks up a blank paper and labels it "BUMBLEBEE 4B" at the top.

"Why don't you ask Weiss about this stuff?" Blake asks, wanting to find a way to leave this place. She's not comfortable with this girl getting close to her history; she's afraid of where that train of thought could lead. "She's a lot better at this stuff than me. I only led a platoon, she led a company."

"I tried, lots of times," Ruby replies. "But it always ends with her yelling about how stupid I am, how I can't come up with a single "special ops grade" formation, me yelling back, and her storming outside."

"Sounds like the bitch," Blake immediately responds. Ruby thinks for a second.

"Oh, right, she's racist," she says, remembering four days ago. There's always been a division between humans and Faunus, even before the First War, so racism is generally accepted in the kingdoms. Border countries are a bit different, with mixed human and Faunus populations. "Well, from what I've heard there's not very many Faunus around Schnee Armament's HQ, so you could, uh, you know, cut her some slack a bit, you know?"

"She claims to be a privileged member of a special forces unit," Blake mumbles lowly. "And yet can't respect the origins of one of her squadmates in the slightest. Ice bitch can bite me for all I care."

"Ok...wait, origins?" Ruby suddenly says. "Whose origins? Yours?" Blake freezes. "You're not talking about Faunus origins, right?"

"No!" Blake blurts out, much louder than she should've. "I mean, no. I'm just saying…" she stalls while she cooks up a cover story. "Because there's a lot of humans alongside Faunus in New Tango and the other border countries, the two species kind of, uh, consider themselves united, I guess."

"United?" Ruby repeats. She hasn't heard something like this from the Borders before.

"Yeah, like we didn't generally treat each other differently," Blake explains. "So Weiss insulting the Faunus is basically insulting me. So I don't have to be a Faunus." Ruby thinks for a second.

"Alright, I think I get it," she says. "So what are Faunus like?"

"How should I know? I'm not one," Blake says. She doesn't know why she's so defensive. What's this little girl going to do if she ever found out? Ruby seems like the kind of girl that always defends the victim, no matter the situation; she's naturally compassionate like that.

"Yeah, I know, I mean what was it like growing up surrounded by them? Did you play with them as a kid?" Blake stares at the ceiling of the barracks in thought, trying to pick out the good memories from the bad.

"They weren't really different, but also not really the same," she starts. "We played games, ran around the town and stuff, but they were always faster and stronger than humans, even as kids. They would jump into large trees in a single bound and drop fruit for us, guide us home if we stayed outside too late, shine laser sights from discarded weapons at them to piss them off, that sort of thing." She always hated those lasers. It flips a switch in her mind that she can't flip off until the little red dot goes away.

"Discarded weapons?" Ruby repeats. "Were they easy to find?"

"New Tango was a bit less stable than other border countries back then, before the Feds moved in," Blake explains. "Lots of militia and rebel groups shooting at each other. We'd do recon and scavenge for supplies for them. That's how some of us paid for our families."

"Did you have a family?" Ruby asks. "I mean, do you still have family in New Tango?"

"Uh…" Blake stammers. "...It's hard to explain. We were the last leg of the boom generation, so…"

"You don't know?" Ruby guesses. Blake shrugs.

"The town raised the kids as a whole. We mostly took care of ourselves, fed ourselves, trained ourselves."

"Sounds rough." Blake nods mellowly. Back then, even just a few years ago when she was a young recruit, that life seemed normal, like something that everyone went though. Now that she's in the kingdoms, she wonders what could've been different if she was human.

The door of the barracks blows open, replaced by the large figure of Port.

"Report to the briefing room immediately," he bellows. Blake and Ruby look at each other worriedly.

* * *

><p><strong>Fort Beacon Armory<strong>

**23:48 hours**

**Day 22 of Hunter training for RWBY Squad**

"Do you think we'll be in command of any grunt units?" Weiss asks Yang, gently placing Myrtenaster in it's case after putting it back together.

"What do you mean?" Yang asks. She's searching for more AP arounds for her LMG; she spent most of her current supply on an exercise the day prior.

"Exactly what I said. Do you think we, as special forces, will have the chance of being in charge of basic infantry units?"

"Well considering that we're about a week away from deployment as Hunters and have received no indication of working that closely with other units, I doubt it." Weiss sighs. "Seriously, why do you care about being in charge of everything so much?"  
>"I've spent my entire adult life working through the ranks of the VAF, and have gained valuable experience as a leader of large groups of soldiers in the process. I don't want it to end with a prestigious promotion to a special forces unit and not put those skills to use." Yang shakes her head.<p>

"You really can't get over Ruby being team leader, can you?" she asks. Weiss looks at her with a strange look.

"Of course not, it's completely illogical."

"_And here we go again," _Yang silently thinks.

"I've been fighting in Counter Wind since the Federation started 'annexing' land, before official war. Besides outranking her, which is obvious, I have legitimate combat and leadership experience, while she has nothing. I suppose that she's been quick learner-"

"No thanks to you arguing with her everytime she asks for help," Yang interrupts.

"-And has proven to have potential," Weiss continues without lag. "She isn't fit for leading an elite special forces unit with an advanced armor system. My question is how are _you _ok with this? You're not an officer, granted, but you are a Sergeant, which still outranks her. Don't you feel cheated?" Yang sighs and closes the cover of a crate of ammo.

"First of all, it's not Sergeant anymore; rank means nothing in the Hunter Program." Weiss rolls her eyes. "Second, _General _Ozpin made the call, not _Captain _Ice Bitch."

"Why is everyone calling me that now?"

"Take a wild guess. All I'm saying is that Ozpin knows a lot more than we know about us."

"What could he know about Ruby that would get her appointed team leader?" Yang leans against a table and thinks back to the many talks she and Ruby shared.

"Well, she grew up on Patch, same as me," she starts off.

"Did you know her?"  
>"No, I lived on the east side of the island, she's west side. Which could explain it."<p>

"What are you talking about."  
>"West side Patch isn't exactly...well, it isn't the capital, you know?"<p>

"What, it's a slum?"

"More like a ghetto. Lots of gangs, gang wars and drug networks tore the place apart and made it effectively lawless; no street cops go to the heart of west side, only paramilitary."

"And Ruby grew up in lawless, drug and gangster filled Patch?" Weiss says. She can't imagine that little girl coming out of a place like that so...innocent, so humble. Although, now that she thinks about the details of their arguments, she can see where Ruby could have gotten her seemingly trained aggression from; she knows how to push buttons.

"Yeah. Apparently her dad was a drug dealer, and her mom was a mule. Guess that's how they met. Her mom died in a shootout, and her dad wasn't much of a dad to begin with, and her uncle did what he could but was stuck in a similar situation, so she raised herself. Ran odd jobs in order to save enough money to make it to the mainland, and was picked up by a boarding school. Sounded like a hell of a journey."

"'Odd jobs?'" Weiss repeats. "You mean like...uh…"

"What, whoring?" Yang asks. Weiss nods slowly, and Yang smiles. "Believe it or not, not every girl in the poor parts of the kingdoms is pimped out. I mean like delivering groceries and carrying supplies and stuff."

"Oh," Weiss says meekly. "Well, it isn't like she's the only one that had an unstable childhood."

"Oh please, don't make me laugh," Yang snorts.

"What, you think life as the daughter of a CEO billionaire is all fun and games?"

"Uh, compared to Patch and ninety-percent of Remnant? Hell yeah."

"Hell no." Weiss points to her left eye. "You know how I got this scar?"  
>"I've heard many theories on how you got that scar. I'm personally betting on the one where you break a million Lien crystal face and tripped in your two-thousand Lien shoes into the shards on an eighty-thousand Lien rug." Weiss glares at the blonde.<p>

"I got it in training."

"Training, as in…"

"Combat training. Simulated firefights, with real weapons and rubber bullets. Since I was old enough to learn."

"You're full of shit."

"I'm not! My father didn't want a girl to end up running his company, but didn't want to lose any of his feminist investors either. So, he secretly trained me in weapons and tactics since I was little, as a poster girl for Schnee Armaments Corporation. 'An ideal soldier of the future, and of progression,' he would say."

"What, you don't want to be a soldier?"  
>"I didn't at first, but I learned to live with it. If I have to serve my kingdom, I might as well do it with the resources my father provides. The only downside is all the White Fang wanting to-" Yang's jaw drops.<p>

"Back the fuck up," Yang says. "White Fang?" Weiss nods. "In Schnee fucking Armaments?" Weiss nods again.

"Well, not White Fang directly, mostly associates of them, like the Atlas Mob."

"The company that supplies half the Coalition with small arms and ammo does under the table work with Faunus? The company that is outstandingly anti-Faunus?"

"My father spoke through money. He always made sure he turned a profit, no matter what assets he used."

"So how did you ever have any contact with Faunus as a kid?"

"My father would escort them to his office for negotiations. Even while I was studying for war, I could look up at any moment and see those black and white uniforms, surrounded by company guards carrying assault rifles and shotguns-"

"Where was this?"

"Sometimes the Schnee Armaments HQ, but mostly Schnee Mansion, my home." Yang silently mouths, "_What the fuck."_

"The fuck was your father doing marching Faunus criminals around his house, with this _daughter _in the same room!?" Weiss takes a deep breath.

"Schnee Armaments and the Mob didn't exactly see eye to eye. My father sacrificed...a lot in order to earn their trust. He'd have to give in to a lot of their demands, illegal demands, in order to get on their side. Part of that was letting them help me train."

"You. Trained with. The Atlas Mob," Yang says.

"They weren't exactly the best teachers, and didn't do anything outside of how to appear intimidating, which basically translates to them scaring me a lot, but my father was pleased I guess."

"What the fuck."

"Yeah…"

"How high up in the Mob did you see?"

"Lots of bosses, some even one level below the Headmaster. You could always tell they were bosses because they modified their genes further than they already were, making them highly acute in smell and sight. They say they can see ultraviolet and radio waves, and can identify the specific smell of anyone. They can even smell fear." Yang looks at Weiss curiously.

"You...you don't believe that last part, do you?" Weiss shrugs.

"They didn't become bosses by luck. They know how to break you, and it never takes long." There's a brief pause. The memories Weiss long suppressed through focus on her work slowly start coming back, but she does her best to ignore them.

"...And you never told anyone?" Yang asks. "The Authorities? The VAF?"

"The Mob has eyes and ears everywhere. I give them up, I go down with them."

"So why are you telling me?" Weiss remains silent. Why is she telling Yang? She's only known her, or anyone in RWBY Squad, for less than a month. She can't trust them, it's insanity to tell them anything this deep in shit.

"Because you're my squadmate, and we're special forces, and...I guess I haven't really had anyone to tell it to before." Yang looks up and down the girl in front of her. Both she and Ruby grew up in a harsh environment, alone and left to the proverbial wolves. Both come out alive, but as different kinds of people. How?

The door to the armor bangs open, and Port enters.

"Report to the briefing room immediately," he orders.

"What? Why?" Weiss asks.

"Your training is being cut short."

* * *

><p><strong>Fort Beacon Briefing Room<strong>

**24:01 hours**

**Concluding day of training for RWBY Squad**

Ozpin points to a picture of a Federation officer on the wall. The Faunus has black hair, long sideburns, hazel eyes, and an angry expression.

"This is Colonel Tukson," Ozpin explains. "He was a prestigious officer in the Federation, and quickly rose through the ranks since the start of the war, demonstrating excellently on the battlefield. Two days ago, he and the unit he commanded betrayed the Federation, and attacked and captured a small military outpost here." He points of a red dot on a map in the border country Oak Whiskey.

"Do we know why he deserted, or how many troops he has?" Weiss asks. Glynda presses a few buttons on her scroll.

"Intelligence indicates he was involved in a few bad deals with the White Fang, and his superiors found out," she says. "He was popular among the men, so he has almost his entire battalion, close to five hundred infantry, a handful of Beowolves, technicals, Creepers, maybe some local militia support."

"Sounds like a small army," Blake comments.

"It is, but most of the armor and infantry is in the field, protecting the perimeter of the outpost from Feds, White Fang and Coalition forces, but there's still at least a hundred inside," Ozpin agrees. "That's why we need you need to move in quickly and quietly, take him alive, and extract him by Fulton recovery before you have the entire base trying to kill you."

"Why take him alive?" Yang asks. "In fact, why bother engage at all? Sounds like he's keeping the WF and Feds occupied."

"Judging by his troop placements," Glynda says. "He's keeping the bulk of his forces on the Faunus lines, but mostly ignoring the human lines. He may want to side with us, and he could have valuable information on the Federation and Faunus terrorist groups."

"So why hasn't he surrendered?" Weiss asks.

"He may have the approval of his soldiers for the time being," Ozpin says. "But it's apparent that they're getting tired of being traitors to their cause, and joining the humans could push them to mutiny, and everyone comes out empty handed. If he wants to join us, he can't do it with his men."

"So we basically have to pretend like we're capturing him as a typical POW and not because he may or may not want to side with us?"

"You know that betrayal isn't taken lightly in the military. If anything, he wants refuge from Faunus forces that want him dead, and I'm willing to bet he'll trade anything for sanctuary. We just need to give it to him. Anything else?" There's a moment of silence. "Good. Suit up and get your gear ready. You leave in two hours for a HALO jump in Oak Whiskey."

"Uh, Sir?" Ruby says, hesitantly raising her hand. "Don't we still have a week of training left?"

"This war is moving too fast, and you all have surpassed expectations in a short time frame," Ozpin says. "As of this moment, you are all officially Hunters. Dismissed." RWBY Squad salutes and walks outside in the dark night.

"Well shit, I guess we're back in the war again, huh?" Yang says to the group.

"Oh, yay," Ruby murmurs.

"You'll do fine," Blake reassures. Ruby smiles at her.

"_I hope so," _Weiss thinks.


	13. Chapter 13: Tukson

**30,000 miles above Oak Whiskey**

**04:56 hours**

"Has anyone ever been to Oak Whiskey before the war?" Blake asks, sitting next to Yang and across from Ruby and Weiss inside the Transall C-160 aircraft, soaring high enough that they are barely visible to the naked eye, and modified to negate nearly all forms of radar and infrared detection. They crossed into Federation territory nearly an hour ago.

"Uh, why would we?" Weiss asks. On top of their AURAs, which have been converted with white armor plating to suit the environment, their weapons, and the equipment required to perform the Fulton recovery, the soldiers have to carrying small canisters of oxygen, along with the oxygen mask and helmet to go with it. Blake and Weiss can detect each other's glares straight through their goggles. "This is a border country, no one from the kingdoms go to the borders."

"This place used to be a popular tourist destination because of the snow. Lots of high profile people. Surprised you've never been here. Although I have heard that the Mob is pretty powerless out here, so that would explain it." Weiss leans forward, which Blake returns.

"I had plenty of snow in Atlas," Weiss replies coldly. "Besides, I wouldn't want to get that close to Faunus snow without heavy gear. I heard the zealots contaminated the atmosphere during their experiments."

"If the contamination creates REMF, then you must already contaminated."

"Hey, guys, I have an idea," Yang quickly chimes in. "How about we try not pissing on each other and focus on the mission? Ruby, what's the plan when we get on the ground?" Ruby hasn't said a word the entire flight. She's leaning back against her seat, left leg bouncing uncontrollably, headphones clamped tightly on both her ears. The hood of her hoodie covers half her face, her helmet resting on her lap. "Uh, Ruby?" Yang says. Weiss rips up the hood and the headphones off in one motion, and Ruby instantly jolts up.

"Gah!" she shrieks, returning to reality. Weiss glares at her.

"Our first mission as official Hunters," she says. "And you decide to take a nap at the tip of the stratosphere?"

"Uh, I wasn't, I mean...what?" Ruby asks, bewildered.

"What's the plan, team leader?" Yang asks kindly. Ruby looks around; all three pairs of eyes are on her, and her brain freezes.

"Uh...plan?" she stalls as her mind races. She puts her helmet on with shaking hands.

"_What the hell is wrong with me!?" _she silently screams. "_I was supposed to use the music to focus on the mission, not space out! I'm the worst team leader ever!"_

"Please tell me we're not going in blind," Weiss says. Ruby gulps and attempts to organize her thoughts.

"Um...well, what do we know about the outpost?" she asks timidly. Weiss makes sure her sigh is easily heard over the roaring engines of the transport.

"Snowy mountain terrain a little less than two thousand meters above sea level," Blake replies. "Typical Federation outpost structure and guards. Textbook scenario."

"Did you pay attention to any of the intelligence we were given after the briefing?" Weiss asks. "You had two hours to prepare for this mission, so you better have a-"

"I got it Weiss, I'm a fuck up," Rose blurts angrily. "I apologize for not running and gunning halfway across Counter Wind like you did. Sorry if I'm not the leader you want me to believe."

"If you're not up for the mission, maybe you should-"

"_Ruby_," Yang says, practically shouts, over Weiss. Everyone turns to her. "What's the plan?" This time, everyone stays quiet, and Ruby looks at the floor in thought. Her mind wanders to her stack of rough sketches of lines and dots.

There's a buzzing noise, and a red light fills the plane with its tint.

"Ready up," Ruby commands, standing up. Weiss and Ruby pat each other down, checking their partner's equipment and making sure all the straps are secure, while Blake and Yang do the same. When they flash each other a thumbs up, they walk to the edge of the closed ramp.

"Ok," Ruby says, taking a quick breath. "Checkmate Alpha Two. If it's a typical Fed base, then there should be two main entrances and two side entrances, each set of entrances identical to one another. Checkmate each takes the sides, Blake taking the lead. I'll provide sniper support from the nearest vantage point. Yang, set up wherever will give you a clear line of sight with the inside of the base if shit goes sideways." Yang nods.

"How am I supposed to move inside the base quietly without a stealth AURA?" Weiss genuinely asks. Might as well see what the little girl can do now that she's showing a hint of confidence.

"Your Myrtenaster has a suppressor, right?" Ruby asks. Weiss takes out the large pistol and a small silver cylinder, about one inch in length, and snaps it onto the end of the barrel.

"Everyone set?" Ruby asks. Everyone throws up the OK sign. Ruby punches a button on the side of the plane, next to the ramp. The heavy hydraulics loudly lower, letting the cool, tangible air of the coldest region of Remnant from over five miles above ground. Fortunately, some of the most advanced clothing in the world almost completely shields the soldiers from temperatures only a few degrees above zero, and they only momentarily shudder from the aggressive winds. Blake starts breathing heavily and gets on one knee.

"You good?" Yang asks, putting a hand on her shoulder. Blake waves her away.

"Never been a fan of heights," she explains. Yang chuckles.

"The only one in the squad that's in the airborne is afraid of heights?" she asks.

"Just let me get off the ramp and I'll be fine."

"That would be in ten seconds," Ruby says, looking at a device wrapped around her wrist. "Set altimeters to five thousand feet." The squad adjusts their own altimeters, setting them to the predefined altitude, at which point it will emit a beeping noise inside their helmets.

"Five thousand?" Weiss repeats. "Subtracting the altitude of the base, that only gives us about two thousand feet to parachute."

"Let's make it quick and low," Ruby says. Yang smiles through her mask.

"I'm down with that," she says. The red light turns green.

"See you on the ground!" Ruby shouts, and the four soldiers, washing away all thoughts of hesitation and regret from their heads, run down the ramp into the icy cold air of border country and jump into a free fall. They immediately spread their arms and legs, regularly adjusting to keep their bodies falling more or less close to one another.

It's one of the most unique and beautiful things any of them have ever seen. Above them, they can see the point in the sky where the blue ends and the black begins, demonstrating exactly how high up they're jumping from. Below them, the thin layer of white clouds are practically blended in with the landscape of Oak Whiskey; nearly neverending white at seemingly random elevations, with flat land spiking into mountains at random intervals. The distant white smoke of a few small villages closer to sea level are overwhelmed by the far off black smoke of war, some from Oak Whiskey, most from neighboring border countries.

In what seems like a blink of an eye, the altimeters are beeping, and the squad pulls the cords of their parachutes. The drogues deploy as the ground rapidly approaches.

Blake is well used to skydiving from being in the Airborne. Weiss has gone skydiving a few times, some for recreation, most for her training. Yang is having the time of her life. But Ruby, on the other hand, is starting to have a panic attack. She feels the pull of the drogue chute, and knows that the main chute should fully deploy in less than 200 feet, mere seconds at terminal velocity, but watching the ground is disorienting; the bleach white snow mixed with the jagged terrain creates a strange optical illusion, blinding her sense of depth. She panics as the ground rushes closer, closer, closer…

Her torso is yanked towards the sky, throwing her feet towards the ground, as the main canopy is torn from her pack and kills her velocity. As soon as her heart rate returns to normal and she can see straight, she checks her altimeter; just below 2,000 feet.

"_Definitely not trying that again," _she thinks. She looks around; her squadmates are at around the same altitude as her, only a few dozen feet from her. She looks down; _now _the ground is close. She quickly stiffens her legs for impact.

When her feet are engulfed by the partially-hardened snow, she doesn't need to worry about manually rolling her body onto the ground to break her fall; she and her squad landing on a hill, which immediately throws their bodies down the incline. Fortunately a quick gust of wind yanks on their parachutes in the opposite direction, giving them time to establish their footing and start reeling the canopies in.

"Quick and low, huh?" Weiss says after the squad has buried their packed parachutes and oxygen gear.

"Uh...well, we made it right?" Ruby says.

"It was a little close," Blake mumbles, securing the straps of her H3 helmet.

"Who cares, that was awesome!" Yang says with glee. "Seriously, why did no one tell me skydiving kicked so much ass!? Why did I sign up for infantry instead of the Airborne?"

"VAF paratroopers don't usually HALO jump. It's mostly at around three thousand feet with static lines-"

"Can we do that again?" Yang interrupts. "I mean, not like right now, but can we request to jump in every mission? Or at least every other mission? Can we parachute in humvees and jeeps too?"

"Uh, Yang?" Ruby says. "Can we finish this mission before worrying about the next?"

"Yeah, right sorry," Yang says. She looks around the snowy surroundings. "So...which way do we go?" Blake instantly points in a direction.

"That way," she says. "We're not too far, only a few miles away from Tukson's forces. We shouldn't run into any along the way."

"That was fast," Ruby says. "How did you figure it out so quickly?"

"_I can smell their trail heading back to the base," _Blake silently answers.

"I'm quick at math," she replies out loud. She takes up her MP7 in her hands. "We should get moving." She starts trekking through the snow. Ruby looks at Yang and Weiss, who shrugs and frowns respectively, before they follow their squadmate.

* * *

><p><strong>Two hours later<strong>

Ruby slides down the mound of snow she was resting on and trudges through the thick snow, which has returned to the mountains in force in the past few hours. Yang, Blake, and Weiss sit in the snow, waiting.

"It's just up ahead," Ruby reports, and the squad stands up.

"How many?" Weiss asks. "Are they on alert?"

"I saw about eight lookouts, a dozen guards on the ground, maybe a few squads moving from the smaller buildings to the main one. They don't look alert. It should be easy."

"Do we know where Tukson is?" Yang asks.

"Most likely inside the main build," Blake answers. "Ground level, below the barracks, near the garage."

"How do you figure that?" Ruby asks.

"_I've been in them before."_

"It's basic Faunus architecture," Blake answers. "All Faunus buildings in New Tango are built like that."

"Alright, let's make this fast and silent," Ruby says, unfolding Crescent Rose. "I have a good vantage point from that hill I was on, so I'll set up there. Blake and Yang, skirt around the right flank. Yang, set up wherever gives you a clear shot on the guards on the ground while Blake takes the side entrance. Weiss, take the left flank and take the other side entrance. Clear?" Everyone nods. "Alright, let's capture Faunus." The squad jog towards their designated paths. Ruby climbs atop her hill, screws a suppressor onto Crescent Rose, carefully lays the barrel in the snow, and peers through the scope.

The outpost looks more like a castle. Surrounded by a weak chain link fence and razor wire, which is more useful for looking good than actually keeping anyone out, the main building is three stories high with few windows and made almost entirely of concrete. Smaller, more fragile buildings made out of metal sit next to the main buildings. They most likely contain equipment and sleeping quarters for soldiers that don't fit in the main building. Pillboxes encompass the camp, one facing each direction. Feds in grey and white fatigues patrol the rooftop of the main building and on the ground around the collection of smaller buildings, all armed with Steyr AUG A3s and Barrett M95s. The long barrels of MG3 machine guns poke through the slits in the windows. There are no vehicles in the compound; they're either in the field or stowed in the garage.

Meanwhile, on almost the other side of Ruby, Yang poke her head up over a mound of snow, and sees that she has a perfect shot on most of the soldiers inside the compound. She unslings Celia and sets the gun in the snow in a prone position. She allows the constant breeze to wash snow over her as she watches Weiss slowly creep up on the fence in the blindsides of the pillboxes, directly in front of the smaller buildings.

On the other side, Blake activates her suit, waits for her body to fade away, leaps up from the snow, and quickly walks up to the fence, doing her best to not flick snow into the air with her boots. She takes out a pair of wire cutters and begins snipping through the wires.

Almost halfway through, a guard rounds the corner of the building, and she hastily drops the cutters into the snow behind her and prop up the partially broken fence with her palms.

"_Don't look this way, don't look this way, don't look-"_

The Fed glances in her direction, does a double take, and stops.

"_Fuck you."_

The Faunus walks over to the fence and crouches down, his face only a few inches from hers. Blake holds her breath.

"What the hell happened…" the Fed murmurs, his eyes tracing the outline of where Blake cut the fence. He reaches out with his hand, and Blake quickly retracts her hands, balancing her body on the balls of her feet. The Fed's hand drops, he sighs and shakes his head. He stands up and quickly walks through the side entrance.

Blake knows that she only has a window of seconds before the Fed comes back with a friend. She picks up the wire cutters, but after a moment of hesitation, she puts it back in its pouch, stands up, and looks both directions. She should be out of sight of Ruby.

Hopefully.

She crouches down and springs up with force only replicable by humans with Ruby's leggings, and easily done by a fully grown Faunus. She leaps over the fence to the other side, runs up to the entrance and jumps again, holding onto the ledge directly above the door to pull herself up just as the door swings open.

"What the hell could've cut it?" one of the two Feds that exits the building say. They walk directly to the broken spot in the fence.

"I don't know, are there animals this high up?" the other asks. Blake drops down as soon as they are far enough from the door and moves inside the building as the door swings shut.

"I'm in," she reports.

"Copy that," Ruby says from her spot. She scans the other side of the compound for Weiss. "Weiss, you in yet?"

"Negative," comes the reply. "I've got a hole cut behind one of the buildings, but a guard on the roof isn't budging. He'll spot me the second I'm inside."

"Can you give me his location?" Ruby asks.

"Yes. Directly on the edge of the roof in front of me, white beanie and Steyr with white tape." Ruby slowly scans the numerous bodies before finding one that matches the description. He's on a lower level of the room and out of sight of his buddies.

"I think I have him. Is he looking to your left right now?"

"Affirmative. Take the shot."

"What, now?" Ruby asks. The Fed starts to turn to his right.

"Yes, fire!" Weiss insists. Ruby lines up her crosshair with the Fed's body, but her finger hovers over the trigger. She feels a knot begin to form in her stomach.

"Shouldn't I wait until he's farther from the ledge?" Ruby asks. The Fed adjusts his beanie.

"FIRE!" Weiss shouts. Ruby stalls her breath, rams her finger into the trigger, and the rifle jumps in the snow with a pinging sound. A second later, the Fed's left shoulder explodes in blood, and his body crumples onto the roof, motionless.

"I'm through," Weiss reports. Ruby moves the scope towards the ground and sees her squadmate run in the open, reach the door, take out Myrtenaster, and quickly enters. "I'm in." Ruby begins to answer, but realizes she's still holding her breath and exhales.

"Roger," she croaks. There's a few minutes of silence while Weiss and Blake presumably roam the rooms of the building in search for Tukson.

"Was that your first kill?" Yang asks over the radio. Ruby goes back to the attack on Camp Signal, when she picked up an assault rifle and opened fire on unseen Feds. She might've killed someone then, there was reportedly enough Faunus in the attack for it to be reasonably probable, but she wasn't looking straight into the eyes of her prey before ending his life. It was all very fast, her actions carried by reflexes drilled into her by her training. It seemed almost natural, and it's unsettling.

"Yeah," Ruby answers.

"Congratulations," Yang replies soberly.

Inside the compound, Blake finds an empty room with the exception of a few rows of lockers and decloaks, letting her battery recharge. She walks through the aisles of lockers before finding a standard issue map of the floorplan of the compound. She traces the rooms with her finger before finding the one marked, "CO OFFICE," below "LIVING QUARTERS," and next to "GARAGE," near Weiss' entrance.

"Weiss," she quietly says into her radio. "I've got the floorplans for the entire building. If Tukson is in his office, then she should be down a hallway to the left of your entrance, about ten to fif-" The door bangs open.

"It's fucking weird, dude," the same voice that met Blake at the fence.

"Radio silence," Blake whispers and cloaks again. Fortunately, the Fed is on the other side of the room of her.

"I think we picked the wrong base to take over," the second Fed retorts. Blake follows their voices down the other side of the room as their locker doors open loudly. "Seriously, why did we have to capture a base on top of a goddamn mountains? Why not in a forest, or desert? At least it's warm in a desert.

"You really think that was wear and tear?" the first Fed asks. Blake moves through the aisles before finding the Faunus in the first one. They're putting their winter gear away; probably changing shifts. Blake starts to inch away. "Because it looked way too exact to be random. And it was just...the right…" Blake freezes.

"...Right what?" the second Fed asks.

"Do you smell someone?"

"_Oh shit," _Blake thinks. The cold must've shielded her scent outside, but not in here. She carefully takes one step at a time down the aisle.

"Yeah, us," the second Fed says. "We really need running water."

"No, not us," the first Fed says. Blake takes out Gambol Shroud and her knife. "It smells like a female." The two Feds sniff the air. Blake is a few feet from them.

"Yeah, I smell that," the second Fed says, turning in a circle while sniffing. He stops moving when he's facing Blake. Blake freezes. "And it's getting stronger."

In one swift motion, Blake flips the switch to decloak and lunges at the Feds. She buries her knife deep into the second Fed's neck and releases the handle, letting the body fall.

"Don't fucking move," she commands, pistol raised. The remaining Faunus freezes, terror in his eyes. "Not a fucking noise. Where's Tukson?" The Fed doesn't say anything. A pool of blood begins to cover the floor. "Where's. Tukson?" Blake repeats.

"He's in the middle of-" the Fed starts, but stops to reach out and grasp the suppressor of Blake's pistol. Blake fires, the bullet grazing the Fed's armpit. "GAH!" he cries out. Blake fires three more bullets into his stomach, and he falls onto his comrade. The door opens again.

"What the hell is going on in here?" the Faunus calls out. Blake steps over the bodies and aims down the aisle. The Fed comes into view, and Blake unloads two bullets into his torso and one into his head, his body immediately crumbling.

"People," Blake says into her radio. "We're made."

"Yeah, so I've heard," Weiss says pressed against the door of an empty communications room, body of a radio operator propped in his chair. She hears several pairs of footsteps outside the door.

"Shots fired, shots fired!" one of the Feds yells as they pass. There's more yelling from deeper inside the building as the news spreads: humans are here.

"I found the hallway, Blake," Weiss says. She moves to the side of the door and puts her hand on the doorknob. "I'm going in and grabbing Tukson."

"Roger," Blake replies, following by a muffled pinging sound. "I'll cross over to the other side of the base and regroup with you. Out." More pinging, then Steyr fire. Weiss takes a deep breath.

She opens the door and leans her body into the hallway, first aiming her pistol to the left, then the right. All clear.

She silently but quickly walks down the corridor. The door to Tukson's office is at the very end, about twenty feet away, but there's three doors in between her and Tukson. The closest one is open.

Suddenly, the farthest open swings open, and Weiss crouches down. A soldier walks out, and Weiss nails him in the heart twice. Another Faunus holds out a PKP Pecheneg bullpup variant from inside the room by the grip and carrying handle, and open fires. The bulky weapon sways wildly from such a weak and ineffective firing stance, but it makes no difference in such a tight environment. The bullets explode on the floor, walls, and ceiling, creating a whirlwind of concrete dust. Half a dozen strike Weiss in the chest and lower legs, which are immediately absorbed by the armor and cause no harm to Weiss herself, but she throws herself to the ground anyway to protect her head.

After at least half of the 100 rounds stored in the box magazine, the LMG retreats back into the room, and the hallway is quiet again. Weiss immediately sits up and aim Myrtenaster just in time for two Feds to emerge from the room, one with a Steyr and the other with the PKP. Weiss unloads the rest of her mag into the one carrying the PKP, who falls almost on top of his comrade. She quickly drops the pistol and raises her G36c from her chest. The Fed is able to plant two shots in her chest before she drops him. As she stands up and approaches Tukson's door, she can feel the soft vibration of her suit battery recharge and replacing the damaged armor plating.

Without delay, she kicks in the door and enters. Four Faunus, three grunts standing on either side of a desk and one officer crouched behind the desk, open fire on her. The bullets rapidly sink into her armor, but Weiss barely pays attention to them. She makes a fast sweep with her rifle from left to right, killing the three grunts before they can even empty their magazines. She turns to Tukson, who is attempting to clear a jam on his GSh-18. She fires one bullet into his hand, making him drop the gun and cry out.

"I'll give you nothing, human!" Tukson shouts. He takes out a knife with his good hand, but Weiss walks up to him and rams her rifle into his cheek. Tukson spits out blood and the knife clatters on the floor.

"Oh, yes you will," Weiss growls. She grabs the Faunus by his neck, presses her barrel to his spine, and leads him outside. "I've got Tukson," she says into her radio.

"Roger that," Ruby replies from outside, and downs another lookout on the roof. She can see Yang's LMG open up as more confused Feds pour out of the buildings. "Blake, come to me and get the recovery gear. Our ride is supposed to come as soon as he sees the balloon."

"Copy," Blake replies. Ruby sights in on a Faunus sniper looking for Yang, but Blake's cloaked body climbs onto the roof and slits the Fed's neck, then runs to the other side of the building, decloaks, and opens fire on a squad of Feds as the side entrance opens, and Weiss and Tukson exit. Ruby downs the last standing Fed.

Blake jumps down from the roof and sprints full speed for Ruby's position. Weiss repeatedly shoves Tuskon forward, occasionally buttstroking his back to keep him in check.

"Ruby, watch my ass," she says into the radio. "We're gonna have a small army on top of us in a few minutes."

"I know," Ruby replies. "Yang, punch a hole to Weiss and move with her."

"On it," Yang replies. She hastily reloads her machine gun, stands up, and runs down to the base, finger pressed firmly on the trigger.

"Weiss, on your right!" Ruby shouts. Weiss shoves Tukson to the ground, turns to the right, and opens fire on three Feds. Between her and Ruby, all are annihilated quickly, but a soon replaced by eight more. Out of ammo, Weiss dives in front of Tukson, shielding him with her AURA, arm over her face.

Blake reaches Ruby and, without stopping, grabs the knapsack full of the extraction gear and keeps running towards the designated extraction zone. They'll want the plane to arrive as soon as they get Tukson strapped and ready.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Yang plows through two of the Faunus, knocking them to the ground like they weigh nothing. With all of her LMG ammo expelled, she swings it by the strap to her back, then swaps it out with Ember. She puts two shotgun shells into the fallen Feds and takes out three of the standing ones. Weiss kills two more with Myrtenaster, and Ruby takes the last one.

"Thanks," Weiss says, standing a disgruntled Tukson up. "Shit, these suits can really take a-"

**BANG!  
><strong>A .50 caliber bullet rips straight through Tukson's chest and into Weiss' suit, knocking both of them back to the ground, one with his blood gushing out of both his front and back wounds.

"No!" Yang shouts, and runs towards the two bodies.

"What happened!?" Ruby shouts. She swings her rifle around in all directions, trying to detect where the shot came from.

"I'm good!" Weiss says, standing up. The large dent in her chest as already started to heal. Yang runs passed her and drops to her knees in front of Tukson's corpse. She checks his pulse. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"Fuck!" Yang shouts. She begins to frantically search his pockets and pouches. This was supposed to be it. Tukson was the answer to everything. He was supposed to tell her.

"Yang, come on!" Weiss shouts, reloading her carbine and scanning the battlefield. Two Feds attempt to emerge from their pillbox and Weiss suppresses them, forcing them back inside.

Ruby commands her heart to slow down, and her hand to move Crescent Rose slower in order to scan the landscape more clearly. Suddenly, she spots the distinct silhouette of a humanoid figure, about 100 feet from the base, higher up on the mountain. It must be the sniper. "I have visual!" Ruby reports. Suddenly, there's a loud and distinct banging sound, and a thin stream of smoke rapidly moves away from the sniper and towards the outpost.

"RPG!"

Weiss turns around to see what the sound was, and is just in time to get a glimpse of the rocket sailing towards her. Unbeknownst to her, the small GLYPH cannons on either of her shoulders had already detected the rocket, calculated the range, wind, and predicted path of the projectile, and took aim the moment she turned around. The little guns fire with a brisk popping sound, and the rocket is detonated midair, its fragments raining down.

"I'm all set, let's go," Blake says on the radio. Ruby watches the silhouette disappear behind the snow. No time to track him.

"Weiss, Yang, fall back to the extraction point. I'll cover you," Ruby orders.

"Yang!" Weiss shouts angrily. The Feds try another assault, and Weiss grazes one before they retreat again. Yang pulls a small notebook from Tukson's inner pocket and hastily flips through it. It's a list of contacts, complete with full names, aliases, and allegiances.

"_This better be it, you son of a bitch," _Yang silently tells the Faunus before standing up, pulling the pin on a smoke grenade, and tosses it towards the base.

"Let's go!" Yang says to Weiss, and they take off running as smokescreen covers them.

"Thirty seconds," Blake tells the rest of the squad as they regroup. The military transport's engines start to get louder. "Where's Tukson?"

"Dead," Ruby answers as she, Weiss and Yang strap on their harnesses and connects themselves to a life line with snap hooks. The lift line is suspended in the air by a small weather balloon. "A sniper got him."

"What sniper?" Blake asks. The sound of the C-160 is almost on top of them. "We're the only ones sent here, right?"

"Someone didn't want Tukson to talk," Weiss says. Yang feels the notebook through the pouch she stowed it in.

"_I guess they failed," _she thinks.

The C-160 roars into view from over the mountain, only a few hundred feet above the soldiers. A hook fitted on the belly of the craft latches onto the line and carries it forward. The soldiers brace themselves as they are ripped off of the ground one by one, almost like a reverse HALO jump, just as MG3 fire rings out behind them. Ruby watches the snowy Faunus outpost fade out of sight as they are reeled aboard the plane.


	14. Chapter 14: Good Hunting

**Fort Beacon**

**10:31 hours**

"...and that's about it, Sir," Rose concludes, standing at ease alongside her squadmates, facing Ozpin, Glynda, and Ironwood in Ozpin's office. "The Fulton recovery went smoothly, and we weren't pursued by Tukson's remaining forces."

"Yes, they surrender to Coalition troops nearly an hour ago," Glynda informs. "They believed that the Federation assassinated Tukson, and took their chances with us."

"Um, Sir?" Blake speaks up.

"Yes, Blake," Ozpin answers nonchalantly, sipping his coffee. He hasn't made much more noise than a few grunts since RWBY Squad began their report.

"Do we know if it were the Feds that killed Tukson?" Ozpin looks at Glynda, who looks at Ironwood, who looks back to Ozpin.

"It wasn't one of our units, was it?" Weiss inquires.

"Oh no, definitely not," Glynda immediately responds. "We wouldn't send you into an AO with unidentified friendlies. What intelligence we've gathered so far points to a pro-Faunus group."

"Pro-Faunus?" Blake repeats. "It wasn't the Federation?" Ozpin sighs.

"Frankly, Blake, we simply aren't sure at the moment," he says, setting his mug gently on his desk. "We've been getting scattered reports of small paramilitary groups that don't seem to be completely allied with the Federation or the Coalition. We have sources indicating connections to a few black-ops Federation agents, terrorists, and mercenaries, but haven't connected all the dots yet. Ruby, are you sure you couldn't make out a general description of the sniper? Height, uniform, weapon?"

"Well…" Ruby says, thinking carefully. "The gunshot largely resembled a 7.62 fired by a Steyr Scout rifle."

"That's an old Federation favorite," Ironwood notes. "Are you positive that the shot came from a Steyr Scout, soldier?"

"Yes...yes, Sir," Ruby confirms. "Definitely a Steyr Scout. Scout snipers still use them today."

"Federation scout sniper, then?" Glynda suggests.

"No scout sniper would carry an RPG-7," Yang says. "He couldn't have been alone, especially all the way out there. He had at least one partner with him." Ozpin looks at Ironwood, who nods.

"Thank you for the report on such short notice, squad," Ozpin says, and salutes, which RWBY Squad returns. "Dismissed." The soldiers shuffle out of the room, their AURA barely fitting through the door frame.

"Well shit," Ironwood grunts the moment the door closes. Glynda exhales loudly as Ozpin goes to get another cup of coffee.

"And what exactly is the problem this time, James?" she asks.

"That's another one," he answers. "More Feds, or WF, or whoever going rogue. And their appearances increase as the war escalates. I'm going to need to dispatch at least three more battalions to the border within the week if we want to keep the Feds at bay."

"You're going to send several thousand more soldiers to the front because of a few random encounters in a lawless land? You do realize that every time the Coalition ships in more troops, the Federation matches us nearly instantly?"

"We can win a war of attrition over the Faunus. They can't train new grunts fast enough." Glynda holds in a string of vulgarity.

"Why are you so opposed to attempting peace, James? This isn't even a legally declared war, and you're already trying to spill as much blood as-"

"I'm afraid I'll have to side with James on this one," Ozpin speaks up. "I got a call from the capital early this morning. This is officially the Second Human-Faunus War, according to the newspapers anyway."

"Parliament is getting scared," Ironwood says with a flicker of a smile, with quickly goes away. "We need to step up the Hunter deployments in order to match this new threat."

"First of all," Glynda says. "You nor anyone else even knows if there is a legitimate 'new threat,' besides your neverending desire for an endless battlefield for you to fight."

"That's up to the Feds, not me-"

"Second, you have Project AURA, Ozpin has the Hunter Program. It's not your call." Ironwood, then Glynda turn to look at the general. Ozpin quietly takes a sip of his coffee in thought.

"We should definitely continue deploying Hunters," Ozpin says. "They're proving to be highly valuable, especially the original batch of squads. But I'm not sure about the border countries anymore."

"I...don't understand, Sir," Glynda says.

"The Federation is frustrated; they're virtually fighting in their territory and making little progress. Their entire population is already tired of total war, and know that we're a lot better off. They'll want to change that."

"If you're talking about sleeper agents inside the Coalition," Ironwood says. "Then don't worry, it's an obvious security risk and it's being taken care of. They won't find a weak spot large enough to launch any sizeable assault on the kingdoms in a million." Ozpin looks at his coffee, swirling the cup.

"I truly hope you're right, James," he says. "I just assume the worst sometimes.

* * *

><p><strong>White Fang warehouse, location unknown<strong>

**13:54 hours**

The UH-1Y Venom touches down on the tarmac of an abandoned airport, outside the largest hangar, which has been retrofitted to serve as one of the Fang's largest distribution centers, formerly of mostly illegal dust narcotics and small arms, now of weapons ranging from shoulder-mounted rockets to vulcan cannons, to whole tank battalions. The surrounding hangars could house anything from Federation Ursa Main Battle Tanks and Nevermore Fighter Aircraft, to their respective Coalition Warlord and Titan counterparts, every war machine armed, fueled, and ready to be sent to the highest bidder at a moments notice.

Mercury jumps out of the helicopters, and Emerald follows shortly after shutting down the instruments of the machine. Roman walks out of the massive doors of the hangar to greet them.

"Hey, kids, great news!" he shouts at them over the winding down rotors of the chopper. Mercury rolls his eyes and unloads his Steyr Scout.

"Yeah, we got him, in case you were wondering," he says. Roman chuckles.

"Oh yeah, that guy, whatever," he says partially to himself. "But you'll never guess; the human Parliament just initiated, now get this: the Second Human-Faunus War. Original as fuck, huh?"

"Weren't you the one that was supposed to take care of Tukson long before the risk of his defection?" Emerald asks, arms crossed. Roman's initial cheerfulness leaves, but his smirk remains.

"What you think this contract is permanent?" he asks. "You stay in line, and maybe I'll promise to pay you."

"Actually, they're my people now, Roman," Cinder says from behind. Roman exhales deeply as the woman joins the group. Emerald smiles with glee, but Cinder glares at her.

"Tukson's dead?" she asks, turning to Mercury. Mercury smirks, pulls back the bolt of the rifle, and catches the chambered round mid air.

"Went clean through," he answers. "He drowned in his own blood if he wasn't killed instantly.

"And the Hunters?" she presses. Mercury and Emerald look at each other curiously.

"Uh...you wanted them dead too?" Mercury asks slowly. "I thought you said Tukson-"

"Tukson was dead either way," Cinder interrupts. "So what was the Hunter squad like? It should've been a new one."

"Really? They looked pretty well trained," Emerald says. Cinder slightly scowls at the girl.

"Well trained...how, exactly?" she asks. Emerald gulps.

"Well, they weren't the best," Mercury says. "They let themselves get shot up plenty, but they took advantage of the suits and would've completed their mission. Killed plenty of Faunus too. Fulton recovery too."

"You didn't engage them?"

"Well, when you said kill Tukson and report on the Hunters, I thought…" Mercury trails off. Cinder's scowl turns into a mischievous smile.

"Don't worry, kid," she says. "If the Federation keeps up their end of the bargain, they're not going to survive the next few months of the war."

"Yeah, about that," Roman says. "The fuck are you and the animals planning? It's like you guys are forgetting about your border defense ready to collapse. And that's not even my fault, so don't push that shit on me."

"You really need to learn when to shut the fuck up," Cinder growls.

"Not the first time a woman has told me that," Roman says, tipping his bowler hat. "Seriously, whatever it is, I want in. Personally. Sounds like a hell of a hostile takeover."

"In more ways than one," Emerald says, winking at Cinder.

"When I want your opinion I'll let you know," Cinder says. Emerald takes a step back and purses her lips in shock.

"I'm sorry, Ci...Agent Cinder," she whimpers. Cinder steps forward and gently places a hand on her shoulder.

"You and Mercury go inside, get some rest," she says. "You're gonna need it." Emerald flickers a smile and nods. The two mercenaries walk into the hangar.

"You really need to knock that off," Roman says.

"You ever fight?" Cinder asks.

"What, like in combat? Well, I joined my first gang when I was 13, first killed when I was 11, and established my first network when I was 15, so yeah, I know my shit."

"Good, grab a suit, the Feds have a little trip planned for us...and a few hundred thousand others."

* * *

><p><strong>Fort Beacon, RWBY Squad Barracks<strong>

**11:21 hours**

"You know what I just realized?" Yang asks, laying on her stomach on her bunk. Ruby is organizing her stack of plans and tactics; Weiss is on her scroll writing a message to her father, although he prefers the term "non-combat sitrep," with no actual military experience himself; Blake is reading her book in the corner, Gambol Shroud lying on her lap.

"What?" Ruby replies.

"We were deployed on a mission deep inside enemy territory, fought off a base full of Feds, got shot up ourselves dozens of times but weren't even scratch, then tied a rope to a plane to escape, all in less than a day."

"Do you have a complaint?" Blake asks without looking up.

"Complaint? That was fucking awesome!" Yang shouts. Weiss sighs.

"We didn't even complete our mission," she groans. Ruby slowly covers her face with a handful of papers, even though no one is looking at her.

"Who cares about some dime a dozen Fed officer," she says. "We were freaking flying! And that was before we took on an entire base by ourselves! They should've started this program a lot sooner."

"In a way, it's a good thing they didn't," Weiss says, glancing at Blake. "It means that the animals didn't cause as much trouble over the years. Blake drops the book, picks up the pistol, and ejects the mag. She rolls the first bullet in her finger, slams it back in, checks the chamber, then lays it back down and continues reading. Weiss huffs.

"_Oh, please don't start this again," _Ruby and Yang think simultaneously, but for different reasons.

"Uh, guys?" Ruby pipes up. "Even if we didn't exactly, uh, succeed our mission, at least we didn't get in trouble or anything, right?" Weiss looks at Ruby and shakes her head.

"What, do you think this is a school game of soldiers or something?" she asks. "This is war. In war, you have to win. If you don't win, you lose. You're no good if you lose."

"As if you've ever lost," Blake mutters as she flips a page. Weiss whips around.

"_Excuse me?_" she snarls.

"You heard me," Blake replies. Weiss scowls for a while, then looks back down at her scroll. Ruby and Yang look around the quiet room for a moment.

"By the way, great shooting, Ruby," Yang says. "You were really on point, especially for your first mission."

"Yes, that is true," Blake says, looking up for the first time since they entered the barracks. "You're a natural at aiming, better than I expected."

"Uh, thanks," Ruby says meekly.

"I guess I can't say that you've never been in combat now," Weiss says.

"I told you, I already-oh, nevermind," Ruby says, and collapses on her bed, suddenly realizing that she's been awake for well over 24 hours.

"Yeah, I think we should get some rest too," Yang chuckles, getting up and walking over to shut the lights off. Weiss and Blake put their scroll and pistol away respectively.

"Great team effort, team," a half asleep Ruby says, holding up a thumbs up. "We killed a lot of Feds today."

"Alright, I'll agree to that," Weiss says as the lights go out. "As long as we can all agree that we failed the mission."

"Yeah, we failed," Yang says, jumping onto her bunk. "But we did it awesomely!" Weiss groans and rolls over.

"Alright, Yang, we can talk about it in the morning," Ruby says, eyes slowly shutting themselves.

"Ok," Yang chuckles. "Good night, team leader. That was some good hunting."

"Thanks," Ruby says, and quickly drifts off to sleep. The barracks is all dark and quiet, except for Yang's green night vision goggles under her covers so she can read Tukson's list of contacts.

* * *

><p><strong>Hello! First of all, to all my old readers, thank you for sticking around this far out and continuing to read! And to the rookies, welcome, I hope you enjoy!<strong>

**Secondly, I'm dropping the hammer and am asking for a beta reader. Between getting my first job, school, and everything else life had decided to throw at me recently, I'm probably gonna end up writing less often and make more mistakes. That's why I've finally decided to go ahead and recruit someone to read the first draft of every new chapter before they come out to proofread for grammar and plot errors and whatnot. I'll admit, I've been lazy on that front, I just really hate editing :P**

**I'm not sure how the beta reader function on works, so I guess PM me if you're interested, and we'll see what happens from there. Thanks!**


	15. Chapter 15: Alpha Golf

**Vale, Vale**

**VPD Car 47, Industrial Region**

**9:49 hours**

"Now this is what I'm talking about," Officer Mavi says as she takes another bite of her sandwich in the parked squad car. "No more dodging bullets from the Mob in Commercial and scraping the blood off the hood of the car."

"Yeah, this promotion kicks ass," her partner, Officer Luce, replies, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. "This precinct is a lot smaller too, so we don't have to constantly bump into the dumbass rookies and jackoffs while on patrol."

"If we ever need to go on patrol," Mavi says, nodding to the empty street in front of them. Their car is tucked in between two buildings, facing the neverending ocean that much of Vale borders. "Look at this. Everyday during working hours. Fucking ghost town."

"Yeah, factory workers don't fuck around a lot, not with the kind of security guards the suits hire," Mavi says, remembering her first time seeing a "private security patrol." Without all the tactical vests, knee and elbow pads, thick gloves, oakley sunglasses, and automatic weapons, they'd look like ordinary civilians, with cargo pants and plain t-shirts and baseball caps of local and international sport teams. A lot of them are also as well trained as most civilians. "They're practically soldiers."

"Yeah," Luce agrees. "I actually almost joined the VAF before the PD."  
>"Shit, really?" Mavi asks in surprise. "You, a soldier?"<p>

"Yeah, I was a dumbass back then," Luce laughs. "Thankfully my parents set me straight and I joined the academy. Would've sucked ass if I actually joined the military."

"From what I've heard, you'd probably be dead by now," Mavi says. "I hear the animals keep pouring more soldiers into the border countries, raiding villages to gain ground and shit."

"Yeah, no way I'd get stuck in the middle of that. Parliament really fucked themselves by getting into this war. Should've just let the Feds kill themselves, not legitimately declare war on them. Just gonna raise the body count." Mavi nods in agreement.

"Well, at least we won't have to worry about it any time soon."

"I hear that." The radio squawks.

"Dispatch to One Victor Forty-Seven," the dispatcher says. Mavi picks up the microphone.

"One Victor Forty-Seven, roger," she quickly responds.

"Well, so much for a day off," Luce mumbles.

"Forty-Seven, do you have a visual on the docks?" the dispatcher asks. The two officer look at each other, puzzled.

"Uh, negative, Dispatch," Mavi replies. "We're blinded by a few buildings."

"Command wants eyes on the docks ASAP."

"Copy, Dispatch," Mavi says, nodding to Luce, who starts up the car and drives out of the alleyway and down the empty street. The city's large docks, the largest in the kingdom, are easily sighted by the towering loading cranes and a handful of cargo ships that are always in port at any given time. Today, there is a small fleet of container ships in formation near the docks, but aren't moving.

"Command says you want to look for a cluster of cargo ships just outside the docks," dispatch says.

"Roger, we see it," Mavi says. Luce parks the car on the road near a turn, the closest they can get to the decks before moving farther away. A police helicopter, then a news helicopter fly over them, towards the docks. "Are we supposed to know why we're doing this, Dispatch?"

"I'm relaying what I have to you, Forty-Seven," Dispatcher says, then after a pause. "Command wants to know what the ships are doing now." Luce takes out a pair of binoculars and sights in on the ships.

"They're moving away from the docks, towards the beaches," he reports. "Looks like they're spreading out."

"Dispatch, ships are oscar mike north by northeast, away from docks."

"Roger, Forty-Seven."

"What the fu-" Luce mumbles. "The fuck am I looking at?"

"Talk to me, dude," Mavi says. Luce shakes his head.

"They look like space ships with propellers," Luce says. "Hovercraft maybe. They came out of one of the ships."

"Dispatch, be advised, one of the cargo ships have deployed what appear to be hovercraft, copy?" There's a moment of silence, except for the noise of the water and distant helicopters.

"Forty-Seven, return to station immediately," Dispatch says, then repeats the message to all units.

* * *

><p><strong>Fort Beacon, General Ozpin's office<strong>

**9:49 hours**

Blake sits quietly in her seat across of Ozpin, watching the officer rifle through a folder, presumably her bio report.

"I'm terribly sorry to ask to meet with you at such an odd time," Ozpin says, setting the folder aside and picking up his mug. "I know that I shouldn't be discouraging any time away from your squadmates, but I was hoping this would be a good time for us to talk." Blake keeps her facial expression neutral.

"Yes, Sir," she replies. Ozpin takes a sip of coffee.

"How much do you know about the bio report?" he asks. "And I don't mean what it is, I mean how it works."

"Very little, Sir."

"Yes, that's the most likely case. It's very difficult to explain exactly how the algorithm works; it took me years to perfect it myself, and would probably take just as long to explain it in full. Would you like me to try and tell you the condensed version?"

"Yes, Sir," Blake responds after a brief pause.

"Basically, the bio report takes separates the details of a person's personality and history, including their birthplace, family, upbringing, average income, police reports, school records, military history, allies and friends, enemies; the list goes on. These details are assigned a number, based on how they stand. These numbers and then either added or subtracted, based on how they function in the algorithm. The final number is placed into a range of numbers, along with three other numbers in that range. These four numbers are the four soldiers that will form the new Hunt squad. Do you understand?"

"I believe so, Sir."

"Like I said, there's a lot more to it than simple arithmetic and grouping, but that's essentially the process it goes through. The reason I've brought it up is that every other soldier that has taken a bio report has grouped fairly closely with their three squadmates, somewhere around the 47th percentile. You, on the other hand, match in the 13th percentile with your squadmates. Why do you think that is?" Blake gulps, and her heart rate starts to escalate.

"I was born in a border country," she replies. "It's a whole different world than the kingdoms, Sir. You have to fight to survive in order to survive. If you don't fight, you die."

"Yes, you are definitely self trained," Ozpin says, opening the folder back up and flipping to a specific page. It says here that you went from basic training to the Airborne Division in only three years, and have outpaced your fellow trainees the entire way. Your superiors took great note of you, as well. You're practically super human."

"_Oh fuck," _Blake thinks.

"I...survived, Sir," Blake shrugs.

"That you did," Ozpin says. "But your physical and mental strength doesn't impress me as much as your naturally militaristic mind. You fit into the military lifestyle completely before most recruits could get into the sleep cycle. Are you sure you never had any formal training?" Blake's heart rate speeds up more.

"No, Sir," she says with a hesitant voice.

"I'm not talking about an official armed force, like the Coalition or border country. Paramilitary outfits can train just as well. Anything from militias to mercenary groups to...well, to terrorist cells.

"_Get the fuck out," _Blake's mind commands, but she holds her ground.

"Did you know the White Fang employ former special forces from the Federation as drill instructors and have a chain of command as complex as the VAF's? What's interesting is that their accelerated training practices are frequently mirrored by human armies, including our Airborne. Although, according to Captain Svart, your former CO, you seemed to already know the training exercises." He takes a sip of his coffee.

"Sir, why are you telling me this?" Blake asks. She has to hold her leg down to keep it from bouncing.

"We know you're a Faunus and former Fang member, Blake," Ozpin replies. Blake's eyes grow wide and dart around the room, searching for cameras. Her hand goes to Gambol Shroud on her hip. "And you're not in trouble. Our records say that you left the Fang shortly after the shift in leadership, which makes you identify as a deserter and refugee." Blake remains silent, hand still on her pistol. "What I want to know is why. Why do you hide your identity and fake your papers? This is a non segregated army, and there are plenty of Faunus in the Coalition. Why try and pretend to be human?"

"The VAF may be non segregated on paper, but not in reality," Blake murmurs.

"Yes, racial tension has always been a problem on Remnant, ever since the Faunus were born. But that doesn't mean that you have to fake what species you are."

"With all due respect, Sir, your species doesn't want the Faunus."

"How so?"

"The First Human-Faunus War began only a few decades after the zealots created the first faunus in an attempt to contain them. Now we're in the Second Human-Faunus War for the same reasons."

"But wouldn't that make the Federation just as bad as humans?" Ozpin asks. Blake shrugs.

"What goes around comes around," she says. Ozpin sets his mug down.

"Do you hate humans, Blake?"

"No, Sir, only a select few of them," she answers.

"Do you think that most humans in the kingdoms feel the same way about Faunus?"

"No, Sir."

"Why?"  
>"They're racist."<p>

"What about Faunus living in the Federation? Are they racist?" Blake remains silent. "I'm sorry if it's not my place to ask these questions, just food for thought. As a commanding officer of the Vale Armed Forces, it is my duty to make sure all of my soldiers know what exactly they're fighting for."

"I know what I'm here for, Sir."

"I'm glad to hear it. You are dismissed." Blake stands up, salutes, and leaves the room.

* * *

><p><strong>Fort Beacon Mess Hall<strong>

**9:55 hours**

"Hey, where've you guys been?" Yang asks when she notices Blake and Ruby walking up to their usual spot in the mess hall. She pats the spot next to her and Blake silently sits down while Ruby takes her spot next to Weiss across from them.

"Ozpin's office," Blake says as she attempts to rip open a bag of bean burrito.

"Why?" Weiss asks, staring at her scroll while munching on a piece of packaged bread.

"Talked about bio reports, that's it," Blake says. She immediately dives into her food even though she's not that hungry.

"Aw, nothing about another mission?" Yang says.

"It's only been two days, Yang," Ruby says. "Even special forces need to rest every once in a while."

"Would've been helpful if we didn't fail the-" Weiss starts, but is interrupted by Yang loudly clearing her throat. Weiss looks over and Yang raises her eyebrows. "Right, right, it doesn't matter anymore. I remember." Weiss turns to Ruby. "By the way, where have you been?"

"Uh, what?" Ruby asks before taking a sip of chocolate milk.

"Why are you always late to mess hall? Every meal, every day?" Ruby continues her sip until her cup is empty. She sets it down in preparation to ignore the question until she realizes all three girls are looking at her.

"I hate to say it, but I have to side with Ice Bitch on this one," Yang says. Weiss shakes her head. "You're always five minutes late to eat. The food isn't that bad."

"It's not the food," Ruby says meekly. "I'm just not a fan of mess halls."

"Why not?"

"They're just, uh, you know...loud."

"You slept through a Templar flying straight over the base last week," Blake says. "They even wake up everyone on the base so we aren't awoken by the noise. How is a mess hall too loud?"

"Well, it's not just the noise. It's really, uh...compact."

"...Compact, huh?" Weiss says. "It's one of the biggest buildings in the base.

"No, not the building, the people. Almost every single person in the base is in here right now. I just…" Ruby trails off.

"If you're claustrophobic, we can eat in the barracks if you want," Yang suggests.

"No!" Ruby immediately replies. "I mean, uh, I don't want to be away from everyone again."

"Again?"

"I said _move, _alpha golf!" the squad hears from across the room. They turn and see a squad of Hunter trainees, easily identified by their patchless Hunter uniforms, confronting a veteran Hunter. The veteran, with long dark brown hair and darker brown eyes, keeps her head low while the trainees block her path.

"Hear him, bitch?" one of them, with blue hair, says to the veteran. "Make way for the humans."

"I don't want any trouble," the veteran mumbles. Heads start to turn to the scene. One of the trainees, with a team leader patch on his uniform, takes an extra step forward, towering over the little soldier. Her tray is visibly shaking.

"If you didn't, you wouldn't have stepped foot in the kingdoms," he growls.

"I was born in-" the veteran starts, but the trainee slaps her tray out of her hands, the contents clattering and scattering on the floor. Many soldiers from nearby tables stand up.

"Hey!" Glynda shouts, shoving her way towards the scene. "Cardin! Back the fuck up!" The trainee, Cardin, raises his hands and takes slow, small steps back from the veteran.

"I don't know what happened, Ma'am," Cardin says. Glynda's speed doesn't change. "It just slipped and I was gonna-"

"Shut up, Cardin!" Glynda shouts. "Attention, all of you!" she commands, waving at Cardin and his squad. They sluggishly stand at attention. Glynda shoves Cardin back to speed him up.

"Permission to speak, Ma'am," one of them, with a light green mohawk, requests.

"You can ask the General," she snarls. "All of you, move!" Cardin sighs, motion his squad forward, and they towards the mess hall entrance. They pass three more Hunter veterans; the team leader has dark brown hair dyed bright red at the end and wears black aviator sunglasses and a black beret. One of her companions has bright copper hair and unusually white eyes, and the other is a giant of a man; nearly seven feet tall, with a traditional Mistral shaved haircut and Mistralian robe. He stops and watches Cardin and his squad, whose pace quickens, then continues forward.

"Let's go, Velvet," the team leader says to the veteran, who quickly nods and joins them. The team leader turns to the rest of the room. "Show's over, people," she shouts. The room obeys, and the usual chatter of the room continues.

"Fuckers," Yang mumbles, watching Cardin exit the room.

"The hell is alpha golf?" Weiss asks. "Never heard that one before."

"Velvet's a faunus," Blake replies, watching the veteran squad. Velvet's team is reassuring her as they stand to get more food, but it's obvious Velvet is having trouble controlling herself. Blake's seen plenty of it in her life, both in New Tango and in the kingdoms. "It means animal garbage. Classic racist slang in the military, mostly in the AA."

"Well, at least it's clever," Weiss says, turning back to her scroll.

"Surprised you haven't heard of it before," Blake says. Weiss pretends to ignore her.

A few minutes pass in silence, then the doors of the mess hall fly open. A guard runs in.

"Is there a tv in here!?" he shouts, looking around frantically. Everyone looks at him.

"Yeah, why?" one of the mess hall workers shouts back. The guard runs towards him, pointing at the large screen above the counter when he spots it.

"Turn it on now! Now!" he shouts. Murmuring spreads throughout the run. Yang looks at Ruby, who shrugs.

"Why?" the worker asks.

"The fucking Feds are attacking! Turn it on!" the guard shouts. The murmuring turns into worried talk, and everyone starts to stand up and migrate towards the counter.

"Attacking?" Weiss repeats.

"Let's go," Blake says, and stands up. The rest of the squad does the same.

"Turn it on, any news station!" the guard shouts. By the time the worker finds the remote, the entire room has packed as close to the tv as they can. The worker turns on the screen, which is on a sports channel. He flips it one channel to the local Vale news station. The newscaster is wide eyed, his face plastered with sweat as he reads the teleprompter like a zombie.

"...and so far there has been no official statement from city hall, the Vale Armed Forces, or the VPD, only scattered reports of random...randoms acts of," he stutters, occasionally glancing at the set behind the cameras. There are occasional murmurs behind the scenes, including "We gotta get the fuck out; they're coming; we gotta go."

"This is Vale?" Yang asks. The newscaster is handed a few papers by someone and quickly reads him. He gulps and looks back up at the camera.

"I have received reports that the first responders of the Vale Police Department have been unable to stop the threat-" the news room shakes, the lights flicker, and panicked screams are heard from behind the cameras. The newscaster is breathing hard now. "Uh...the...more police forces have been dispatched to help in evacuation. All citizens are advised to leave the city immediately." Someone apparently begins talking into his earpiece, and he pauses. "I've just gotten word that one of our reporters is in the streets, a few miles away from the docks. We'll try and connect you now...I think…" The screen flickers a few times between the reporter's view and the news room's, but finally settles on the reporter.

"Oh shit!" she shouts. She and the camera man are standing behind a VPD SWAT van. The distant sound of sirens, gunshots, and helicopters nearly drown out her voice. Civilians covered in dust run down the street, while police officers work to guide them, some of them even charging down the opposite direction of the street.

"What's happening, Lisa?" the newscaster asks. There's an explosion and Lisa nearly falls down. Her makeup is running in every direction on her face, her dress is covered in dust and torn in several places.

"The...the…" she mutters, then clears her throat. Two squad cars slowly drive past her, trying to not run over and civilians. "There are people everywhere. The police are attempting to set up a barricade here and buy the civilians some time before the enemy makes it this far, but judging by their numbers and speed, I don't...I don't know how much longer I can stay here!"

"What enemy, Lisa?" the newscaster asks. An explosion blows away an entire floor of a skyscraper in the background, and Lisa squeals. Some of the cops drop their flimsy wooden barricades and join the fleeing civilians.

"What are you doing!?" a riot officer shouts at Lisa and the camera. He's reloading his M79 grenade launcher with a smoke grenade. "Get the fuck out of here!"

"Lisa!?" Another explosion, close enough to send half of the people to the ground and the rest stumbling to regain their footing. The camera is out of focus for several seconds. It finally settles back on Lisa's terrified face.

"_They're Faunus!" _she hollers. An APC with twin autocannons rolls into the intersection down the street, crushing a taxi.

"Let's go! Let's go!" the cameraman shouts, and drops the camera. The picture settles perfectly on a group of officers taking cover behind a squad car and the legs of dozens of fleeing people. A split second later, there's the sound of an autocannon firing, and the large 25 millimeter round pierces a hole straight through the car, and the officers fall to the ground. An MG3 opens up from the Beowolf, and bullets fly into the asphalt, the vehicles, and the people. Cries of pain and agony fill the air as blood and bodies begin to fill the street. The screen quickly cuts to the SMPTE color bars.

The mess hall is dead silent as the soldiers process what they just saw.

The doors are blown open again, this time by Port, who is wearing full AURA gear and carrying an FN FAL.

"Grab your gear, people!" he shouts as the air raid siren goes off outside. "We're going home!"


End file.
